


Incubus

by Brezifus



Category: Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, The X-Files
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Bugs & Insects, Crime Scenes, Dreamscapes, F/F, Monster of the Week, Prostitution, don't fact check it's all wrong anyways, i haven't any idea what to tag, it's been 2 years since i wrote this, that's why they put the I in FBI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brezifus/pseuds/Brezifus
Summary: After a string of strange findings at the crime scenes of murdered sex workers, newly fledged special agent Clarice Starling turns to a basement department of the FBI for theories.Theories which involve a lot of bugs and insects and don't make any sense, but at least she finds someone there who feels the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello hi hello! do you want a note or do you want HUGE DISCLAIMERS;
> 
> \- i wrote this about two years ago so i don't remember much of anything right now, but as i go along chapter by chapter i'll try to insert content warnings based on the original tumblr posting of this fic  
> \- there is a drag queen character that was written whilst attempting to steer the fic to be based in the 90s. do let me know if anything's awry  
> \- MOST IMPORTANTLY, i barely researched anything before starting this fic, and by researched i mean UHHH THE CANONICAL BIRTHDATES AND HEIGHTS OF THE CHARACTERS so just bear with that because in the end--
> 
> i just wanted to write gay ass special agent women
> 
> (in that regard it's been years but i read silence of the lambs and the first half of hannibal but i have zero respect for thomas harris so go figure!)
> 
> pleas....enjoy. typos n all.

Special Agent Dana Scully stood as a perfectly normal, unrecognizable young woman in the check-out lane. A small basket of peaches and nutbread moved slowly down the conveyor belt as her eyes stared off into space. It was small moments like these that she didn't know she yearned for; seconds of quiet respite she had all to her mind as she waited for a cashier, or the light to turn green, or the blank moments where she flipped a page over before she could continue reading. Flashy tabloids and trashy magazines sat on her line of sight, but she barely skimmed over them. Most were wild celebrity fabrications, some were cryptozoology scams she knew Mulder would devour as if they were real. The big story right now that seemed to try and take front and center to many of the magazines were questions about a young FBI agent named Clarice Starling. Not too long ago as a trainee she had used famed psychiatrist (and cannibal) Hannibal Lecter to track down serial killer Buffalo Bill. She had made headlines then and was still making headlines now.

It was a load of bullshit. Not Starling's incredible success, no, Scully was understandably impressed (if a little jealous) at such an achievement so young, but the tabloids themselves. All bullshit. _How Starling Seduced Hannibal the Cannibal—“I was inside the mind of a psycho!!”_

Yeah. No.

Despite Scully's personal feelings on whether or not FBI agents should be on the front pages of tabloids (they should _not_ ), she paid the magazines little mind as the cashier bagged her food and wished her a nice day. Scully smiled, quiet and quick, before she left the store and made her way to work.

The basement was cool and things had a tendency to echo amongst the concrete despite the stuffiness of the atmosphere. Somehow it lent a pressing feeling to how alone Scully was as she meandered her way to the simple wooden door with one plastic nameplate on it. Fox Mulder—the man, the spook, the urban legend. So to speak. Scully knocked, quietly waiting for Mulder's muffled _come in_ before opening the door. He glanced up from his seat, but upon seeing it was her, paid her little mind other than a good morning. Twisting her mouth, Scully dropped the bag of groceries directly on his desk, forcing him to glance up at her again and actually _look_ at her this time.

“Breakfast,” She greeted, a little curtly, and gestured towards the bag. Mulder studied her for a moment before eagerly prying the paper bag open. Plucking two peaches and wrestling two slices of nutbread out, he gave himself a window of precisely two seconds to thank her before he started stuffing his face with the food.

“Skinner said he found you here at five in the morning, wearing the same tie you were yesterday.” Scully continued dryly, folding her arms in front of her.

“Am I?” Mulder asked as crumbs of nutbread fell from the corners of his mouth. He didn't even glance down at his tie. Scully pressed her upper lip into a sarcastic smile and pulled the bag towards herself, taking a peach.

“What is it now?” she asked with a sigh, “Chupacabras attacking cows, ghost ships in the Bermuda Triangle, another Bigfoot sighting?”

“You wound me, Scully,” Mulder mumbled past his mouthfuls, “Chupacabras specifically only attack goats, it's in their name. No, I've been going over the Red Light case since...um. What time is it?”

“Nine thirty,” Scully supplied, biting into her peach, “In the morning. Why the Red Light case? Serial murders of prostitutes aren't exactly a new phenomena.”

“Well, at least I got some sleep,” Mulder muttered. Scully raised an eyebrow, then noticing that one half of his face was pinker than the other from when he undoubtedly passed out on his desk. Mulder swallowed down what looked to be too much food at once, then continued, “But exactly. It's not a new phenomena and for good reason.”

Scully raised both eyebrows then. _And here he goes._ Mulder stood up as if to signify her thoughts, peach in one hand and case file in the other. Usually when he was about to go on one of his tirades he'd take a moment to stop and ask her questions to see how much she knew on a subject, but being in the office overnight must've made him circumvent all formalities because he just started and never stopped talking.

“Cases like this have been around for thousands of years, possibly dating back to as early as 2400 B.C.. Back then they were classified by _incubus_ or _succubus—_ ,”

Scully didn't interrupt him—not vocally—but as the words rolled out of his mouth her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Whether or not he noticed was not a big deal; nothing stopped the Mulder train on its way to the station. That was admirable, in a way. Very admirable. But sometimes the train certainly had strange passengers.

In this case, sex demons.

Alright, well, Mulder certainly had stranger theories—but Scully would only say so just because she had seen his vast collection of... _erotic_ content once or twice.

“Demons like that would feed off of sexual intercourse and thereby the life of their victim; leaving the victim to either become ill or in extreme cases die which is what I believe what we're dealing with here.”

_We're_ dealing with? For all Scully knew Mulder just picked up the files and started reading, there were already other FBI agents on this case and the presence of 'Spooky Mulder' might complicate things. Rolling her tongue in her cheek, she pursed her lips.

“What makes you think this is what we're dealing with?”

“Well—,” _Well Scully I'm glad you asked_ , “Each of the victims so far in this Red Light case have certainly had sexual intercourse but there's been no signs of rape just before their death. Furthermore there's no signs of a struggle and none of the deaths have been especially violent. It's like the bodies just _shut off_ after finishing.”

“Any toxicology reports to look at?”

“Uh,” Mulder dipped his chin to leaf through the files with fingers sticky from peach juice. Patiently waiting, Scully pulled out a slice of nutbread and slowly began to chew, “I guess.”

“Your most confident statement yet,” Scully remarked. Stepping forward she took the files from Mulder's messy hands, idly noting that hers weren't that much better, and flipped through for him, her eyes scanning each page of the autopsy reports. Her brow slowly knit together in concentration, then in confusion.

“No abnormalities found in the bodies, no chemical imbalances that can't be explained by normal levels of prescriptions, drugs, or birth control...,” she muttered, “Alright, yes, it's a little strange, Mulder.”

“Especially since most deaths involving prostitutes _are_ violent and bloody and there's at least some attempt to hide the body, say, dump it in a river.” Mulder pulled the rest of the nutbread out and onto his desk, taking two more pieces as well as the last peach. Scully eyed his hands warily, watching him stuff it into the vacuum of his mouth. Snatching the nutbread, she took more slices for herself before it got sucked up by Mulder's appetite. He hardly seemed to notice.

“Where were most of the victims found?”

“Any place you'd take a prostitute I guess, back alleys, hotel rooms under pseudonyms, the prostitute's apartment—you're not following it on the news, Scully? It's all over the place,”

“No,” Scully replied, a little terse, “In fact I like to have nice evenings away from work when I can.”

“If that was directed at the time I got attacked by cockroaches, need I remind you that you insisted on coming up in the end.” Mulder retorted.

“I still was covered in crap at the end of the day,” Scully let one hand stay on her hip as the other fell, tapping the files against her thigh as she stared down Mulder, “It was more towards the fact that you apparently haven't been home in at least 24 hours.”

Mulder dismissed her by waving his half-eaten peach in the air, “This was important,”

“Have we been asked to be on the case?” Scully asked. Mulder paused then, in the middle of chewing, then looked to the side as if trying to come up with an answer she'd deem acceptable. That was a distinct _no,_ then.

Mulder opened his full mouth to respond but Scully's loud sigh interrupted him before he could as she relented, “I'll at least see if there was anything missed in the toxicology reports. It's very likely that they handed it over to some young newbie—,”

A soft knock on the door cut Scully short and the two of them looked at each other before looking at the door. That was definitely not Skinner's knock, and barely anyone would ever come down here for advice or idle chatting. Mulder shrugged with a small smirk then called for the person to come in.

She entered then. Though she looked lost and a little unsure of her being there, she had thrown her shoulders back and straightened her spine, her jaw tight as she stepped into the room. Her hair was a deep and rich auburn and it rested on her shoulders in thick locks. Her nose was pinched and pointed and her mouth was a thin line as her eyes fixed forward. They were blue, similar to Scully's, but something about them weren't as icy as hers were despite the fact that they were a colder shade.

Mulder audibly swallowed a chunk of peach, standing behind his desk. Scully almost looked back at him as if to figure out an explanation together, but for some reason she couldn't take her eyes off the girl. She was young, very young, practically a trainee, and her guarded stance screamed that she still wasn't used to being in the FBI. Still, there was a strange air of familiarity about her that made Scully's mouth sew shut. Chalk it up to being the one stranger in the room, but somehow the girl had changed their attitudes in a split second.

There was an awkward silence. Mulder bobbed his chin as though he was debating whether or not he should break it by asking what she was doing here. The girl stared down both of them, as if judging their characters from afar. A profiler, perhaps? Scully tapped the files in her hand idly, wondering why no one including herself was attempting to navigate out of the silence.

The girl cleared her throat, “Skinner sent me down here.”

“Ah,” Mulder nodded at her answer, then cocked his head to the side after a second's consideration, “What did Skinner want?”

“It's...not what Skinner wants,” The girl was talking as though she was pushing words through her teeth, “It's what we need for the Red Light investigation.”

Scully raised her eyebrows and then finally was able to tear her gaze away to look at Mulder. He returned her look, then went back to the girl, “We're aware of it, yes.”

“It's a big case, there's just some um...Problems with the autopsies.” the girl admitted, spitting out the words _big case_ with unveiled resentment.

“So we've noticed, the toxicology reports are suspiciously normal for the nature of the crimes,” Scully spoke up then as the girl nodded in agreement. Scully furrowed her brow a little, “Who are you, again?”

Mulder failed to stifle a shocked laugh and Scully whipped her head back to him. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, making the tip of his nose shiny with peach juice.

“Scully you really _don't_ follow the news?” he chuffed quietly. The girl stiffened and swallowed hard, clearing her throat again. Her eyes darkened a little and her shoulders sagged, unhappy.

“Agent Clarice Starling.”

Scully's chin raised a little. Yes, that's where the air of familiarity came from. This was the same girl, same FBI agent that had been plastered all over the tabloids when Scully was picking up breakfast. Red Light wasn't her first case then. Perhaps her first case as an official agent and not just a trainee, but that was still something to note. Such a big case was sure to keep her face on the covers of magazines. Cocking her head a little, Scully studied her.

“I follow the news enough to know who she is,” Ah, she blinked harshly as though Scully's words were an unintentional nick into her side, “I just don't keep up enough with the tabloids to know much else.”

Agent Starling jutted her chin out, her voice steely, “Maybe you should. I hear they have all the secrets as to how I got Dr. Lecter to talk.”

Mulder looked at the two women staring at each other, feeling some sort of heat in the room rise. What it was he couldn't say, but it went beyond an _air of familiarity_ that had settled in as soon as she had stepped into the room. It was obvious that Scully felt it too but probably wasn't processing it as anything else other than being a little miffed—dare he say _spooked—_ that Clarice Starling had walked into the room.

“Well I'm sure the tabloids know what they're talking about,” Mulder said, and though his tone was flat Scully could tell he was joking. If Agent Starling could tell, though, Scully didn't think so, since her eyes flashed to Mulder in an instant. Still the girl had enough sense in her to not start a fight she'd regret, and she heaved in a breath to hold before releasing it.

“What I mean is,” Mulder stammered to explain. Scully turned to _really_ look at him then—Mulder was never really one to explain the phrases he chose to say, opting instead to be brusque since he knew most people wouldn't trust him anyways, “To catch a killer you've got to get inside the killer's head, right?”

To Scully's surprise, Starling seemed to relax a little at Mulder's clarification. She gave a nod and a small _yes_ as though she was testing the waters. Mulder nodded slightly in turn, causing Scully's back to arch and her shoulders to broaden, a porcupine raising its spines in agitation.

“I heard you were at Quantico,” Mulder continued, trying to toss the pit of the peach as discreetly and coolly as possible. Scully could still see peach juice drip in the creases of his hand, a hand he then tried to hide behind him. Why her heart began to race she didn't know—she couldn't even place the emotion that was making it do so. Mulder's voice reached a guarded tone which relaxed Scully only a little bit as he froze and asked, “Patterson?”

“No,” Starling shook her head, her auburn hair catching some of the sparse amounts of sunlight in the room, “Crawford.”

“Ah,” Mulder nodded again. Scully twisted her mouth, “Heard about his wife. Sad news.”

Agent Starling visibly relaxed then. Hell Mulder was probably one of very few people who didn't just run up to her asking questions about the Buffalo Bill case, or anything extremely intimate about Hannibal Lecter. Yes, that was it, Mulder was just extending a courteous hand to the tabloid girl. After all, she had hardly come down to the X-Files to be in the tabloids. Blinking rapidly as she stared at the girl, Scully heaved in a breath.

“So, where do you want us— _me—_ to start?” Scully asked, noting that she was the medical doctor in the room. Mulder pushed out his lower lip, looking down at his desk as if to assure himself that of course Scully was the person Starling was looking for.

“Well...another victim was found this morning,” Starling continued, “You can start the autopsy immediately if you wish.”

“Fantastic,” Scully said flatly. With any luck she'd have a normal cut-and-dry case for once, despite Mulder's wild theories, “I'll send for you when I'm done.”

“Ah,” Starling interrupted as Scully tucked the files Mulder had given her under her arm and readied to leave, “I'm supposed to oversee the autopsy.”

Scully froze and looked at the girl, her gaze hard and questioning. Mulder looked up, recognizing her expression instantly as one that could potentially be very dangerous. It was the same one she wore whenever some big boy with a fancy police badge scoffed at her credentials or expressed concern over her _ladylike sensibilities_ in such a _gruesome_ case. Famous tabloid girl or not, Starling had better tread carefully when dealing with Scully in her home field. He remained quiet as Starling tensed, trying to make herself as rigid as Scully looked.

“Orders from above,” Starling continued, “I've heard you're used to unusual cases and autopsies, I'm just supposed to make sure you don't get...,”

Mulder raised his eyebrows at the girl as Scully's expression remained stony and cold. Starling had to pause for a breath before finally saying, “...carried away.”

Silence. Scully's skin looked white like marble, a curious thing that happened to her whenever she was holding back tides of anger. Even when completely enraged Mulder had never seen her skin flush red as one would expect it to.

“Agent Starling I think you'll find that the work I do will be to the bureau's liking whether you observe me or not, and that my time with the X-Files—,”

“She'll do great work, Agent Starling, good enough for the tabloids,” Mulder interrupted Scully's indignant words, sweeping around his desk to pull himself enough to not go unnoticed between the two women, “Now, is there anything I can do for you?”

Both women looked towards him, Scully's eyes narrowing in suspicion while Starling simply looked him up and down, wondering how to proceed.

“Assistant Director Skinner has his eye on the case,” Starling finally said, “I guess he'll contact you if he needs anything.”

“Or will he send you?” Mulder asked. Starling's eyebrows curled in bemusement, trying to figure out Mulder's motivations. Scully's hard stare at him remained, but she blinked and turned back to Starling as she effectively ignored her partner to speak to her.

“I'll be waiting in the autopsy room.”

With that she turned and left, her auburn hair catching another shimmer from the sunlight. Why such little details were catching Scully's attention she didn't know and didn't care, watching hard as the girl walked away and opened the door.

“ _Succubus_ ,” Mulder coughed with a small hiss of recognition. Starling, who wasn't quite out of earshot, froze with her hand on the door handle. For a moment Scully was terrified she'd turn around and give them a stare that she had seen before, the whole _you're fucking crazy_ routine she had gotten terribly used to. But with a small tremble Starling left, slamming the door a little too hard behind her. Heaving another breath, Scully turned to Mulder.

“ _Succubus_ , Mulder?”

Mulder opened his mouth, a grating low sound escaping him as if he was trying to reconstruct his brain from mush. Crossing her arms, Scully waited once more for him to start and not stop talking.

“Well, succubi and incubi can come in different kinds of forms, so long as they feed off of the raw attractions and emotions of human beings.” He passed a hand over his forehead and down his cheek, staring at the door where Starling was moments ago.

“Don't,” Scully said, enunciating a little too clearly, “Don't even _suggest_ she's a succubus.”

“Too late,” he murmured, “And she heard. What if she knows?”

“What are you even _talking_ about, Mulder?” she sighed, exasperated. Mulder, now talking over the ridge of his palm, leaned against the edge of his desk, “You think she's our suspect?”

“No, no, I think she's a _social_ succubus, not a sexual one. Look at all the tabloids and news about her, look at how she's landed _another_ big case immediately after the last one—how many FBI agents would you be able to name if you weren't a part of the FBI? Knock on any door, which FBI agents would be household names other than Clarice Starling?”

Scully rolled her eyes again with a sigh, waving her hands slightly to signify that she saw his point but still found it to be incredibly...unrealistic.

“So what you're saying is that she secretes super pheromones or something to make people get all excited about her?”

Mulder started to smirk, trying to hide it behind his hand, “Well, look at you, Scully, I've never seen you get so immediately uppity over someone like that. Jealous?”

“What, of her?” Scully snipped, a little too much emotion making its way past her lips, “She was just unexpected, that's all. And besides, _you're_ the one that was affected, I've never seen you stutter over yourself like that when talking to someone like that.”

“Well, you weren't there when the cockroaches attacked me,” Mulder muttered into his hand. Scully bent forward.

“Sorry, _what_ was that?”

“Nothing,” Mulder tried to shake it off even though he knew Scully wouldn't believe him in a million years, “Go do the autopsy, I'll see if I can dig up anything else here.”

“Sure. Fine. I'll tell you if it was an incubus that killed her or not.” Letting her arms fall to her sides, Scully made her way to the door.

“I'm much more interested in the idea of Agent Starling being a succubus, why don't you find that out for me?” he called after her.

“Keep dreaming, Mulder, you have _plenty_ of video tapes to help you do that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've immediately given up on pulling the publication dates so long as you know it was originally in early 2016
> 
> content warning: autopsies (ie exposed organs), gross gross insect theories thanks mulder, and bodily fluids left behind at a crime scene

Scully breathed deeply, the familiar feel of scrubs brushing up against her skin helping to calm her as she opened the door and entered the autopsy lab. Agent Starling was already there, her hair still a peculiarly luscious auburn even in the artificial light. Blinking, Scully tried to rid herself of Mulder's words that were still echoing needlessly in her head. She reached up and grabbed a pair of gloves, pulling them onto her hands with decisive snaps of latex. Trying to be friendly despite their awkward first meeting, Scully gave Starling a small smile before letting her show her where the body was. Starling smiled back, but it seemed ashen, as though it was just a motion she went through and there was no real emotion behind it.

Oh well.

Scully unfolded the blanket away from the victim and gave a sigh of preparation, “So, who is she?”

Starling heaved a sigh as well, looking down at the papers in her hand, “Uhm...a Miss Cynthia Velasquez, age 29, time of death between midnight and 2 a.m.. Her body was found in an apartment near the King Street train station, apparently it belonged to her for her...work.”

“Prostitution?” Scully asked. Starling glanced up and nodded, dropping her gaze as Scully continued, “Any work done, any semen samples collected from the crime scene?”

“No,” Starling shook her head, “As far as I know you're the first to perform any postmortem examinations. They're still combing the crime scene now.”

“Well...,” Scully said, brushing some of the young woman's hair to the side, “Initial examination reveals no clear sign of trauma—no abrasions, lacerations, or any other signs of violence. Several tissue samples will have to be extracted for toxicological testing, and I'll oversee them to make sure nothing is missed.”

“Any idea of what tissues you'll be testing?” Starling interrupted. Scully paused, glancing up at her to process the fact that she had just asked such a brash question before continuing on. Starling had spark, that was for sure. If she had been one of Scully's students then the question wouldn't have hit such a nerve. Hell, even though she wasn't a student Scully still wasn't certain why it _was_ hitting a nerve with her. Maybe Mulder was right on the jealousy front—but only because Scully was jealous, not because she was some succubus or whatever.

“The liver for sure, uterine samples as well. Pulmonary, skeletal muscles, samples of adipose...whatever we can get. If these victims keep showing up it's quite a bizarre coincidence that all these previously relatively healthy women just keeled over and died.”

“Bizarre coincidence,” Starling repeated, her tone guarded as though she had been warned against this. Scully looked up again, staring the girl down.

“I don't like apologizing for my partner's behavior although I do it often enough. I am simply telling you what needs to be done, what I have to do, and the matter of the fact that the nature of this case is bizarre enough that you were sent down to the X-Files to help solve it. You can take the facts as you wish, but these remain to be the facts.” Scully reprimanded with a hard voice. Starling didn't break her gaze, swallowing as she did so.

“I'm not a child, you know,” Starling retorted, “Probably not too much younger than you.”

“Indeed,” Scully agreed, biting her tongue lest she lecture the young agent more, “Agent Mulder's behavior does not reflect mine, but I'll have you know any words you heard him say were said with complete sincerity and conviction.”

“Oh yeah?” Starling said through gritted teeth, “No wonder they put him in a basement if he calls every young woman that walks into his office a _succu—_ ,”

“He doesn't,” Scully cut off quickly, her voice taking an unexpected soft turn, “I can assure you that. Mulder is eccentric, but he was, in all honesty, calling you a succubus in the most literal terms I can think of possible.”

Starling raised an eyebrow, and therein lied the _are you fucking crazy_ look that Scully was...so used to seeing. Albeit they were more often directed at Mulder rather than her, she still blinked slowly, holding her gaze with the young agent. It was very likely that when this case was all over and done with Starling would recede back into the woodwork of the FBI (relative to the X-Files) and simply sneer _spooky_ from the corner, as did most of the rest of the bureau. It wouldn't be the first time, the last time, and it would never be a surprise. Scully wasn't going to plead and beg for approval, all she needed was her own and Mulder's respect for her helped her hold that. But it was clear to see that Mulder's sudden outburst had cut Starling deeper than he would ever intend.

“Literal terms,” Starling had a habit of repeating her words, “So I'm a sex demon to him.”

“Well,” Scully said, turning her gaze to the victim as she began the incisions on the body's chest, speaking as she did so, “Not exactly. According to him there are different kinds that would feed on different emotional levels. So, in your case, he was thinking a social succubus.”

“A social demon,” Starling said, hurt bubbling in her voice, “Because of the tabloids, I bet.”

Scully paused, hearing Starling's voice waver, and she looked up again. Starling was staring at her in such a way that Scully began to believe it was the same way the girl had stared at Hannibal Lecter when he had suggested a particularly disgusting thing to her. Whatever small emotionless spite Scully had developed for the tabloid-famous FBI agent in front of her simmered away and a pang of sympathy took its place. Look at this girl, with her sheening auburn hair, her stiff spine, her eyes that couldn't be icy enough, and her words that were too curt to come from a place of confidence. It was very, very likely that _Tabloid_ had become her title as much as _Spooky_ had become Mulder's. What was it about Scully that kept getting her teamed up with these sorts of agents?

“And you really believe that crap, Agent Scully?” Starling whispered. Scully rested the heels of her palms against the autopsy table, scalpel in one hand.

“Agent Starling I was not assigned to the X-Files because I believed in Mulder's wild theories.” With a small, meaningful nod and stare, Scully let the conversation die. Her voice filled the silence of the room as she made reports on the body, noticing that Starling was acting as her recorder and scribbling down everything she said, occasionally asking for spelling advice on particularly difficult and long words. Organs were removed and examined individually, and though Starling's nose was wrinkled for much of it she didn't say a word, letting Scully do her job quietly.

As she was pulling out the victim's uterus, Scully's cell phone started blaring, it's shrill chirps bouncing off of the metal in the room. With a disgusted and exasperated sigh, she peeled one glove away from her hand and dug into her pocket. Pulling the antenna with her teeth, she answered the phone.

“Scully,” she answered dryly.

“Hey, Scully, it's me, have you finished the autopsy yet?” Mulder asked brightly from the other end. Breakfast had really done him good. Still, Scully gave a curdling glance at the organ in her hand.

“Mulder I am standing here cell phone in one hand and what is essentially a postmortem hysterectomy in the other.”

“Well, did you get her consent first?” he quipped. Scully's expression curdled further as if she had become victim to the worst pun in the world and she pursed her lips, waiting for Mulder to get to the point, “Alright, alright, I get it, anyways, listen, when you get to the toxicology part of it be on the look out for something called cantharidin, trace amounts of it came up in some cases of unexplained deaths after having sex.”

“Isn't that just Spanish fly? I bet I'd find trace amounts of it in a lot of your magazines.”

“Hardee-har-har, but we're talking insane levels of cantharidin here, like as if you might as well be dissecting a Spanish fly itself.”

“Mulder, it doesn't take that much cantharidin to kill a person, it's highly toxic and it's not recommended for use, even as wart removal which it does _much_ more efficiently than as an aphrodisiac.” Scully sighed impatiently, setting the uterus on the scale and barely aware of Starling watching her, “And if what you're saying is true, then the killer could be a misinformed pharmacist, or a vengeful one, or just some dumb kid who bought the drug from any of the above.”

“ _Or_ ,” Mulder cut off, and Scully's twisted her mouth and raised her eyebrows, recognizing the raising excitement in his voice. Starling noticed the change in her expression and tried to strain her hearing so she could try and hear Mulder on the other line, “Our incubus perpetrator is a Spanish fly-human incarnate. You know, like _The Fly_ , but Spanish. As an incubus.”

Scully was extremely tempted to drop a pin needle in the room just to see how many times it could echo in the complete silence that followed what she had just heard on the phone. It was then that she looked at Starling, who was slightly taken aback from the deadened yet intense look of _this is what I have to deal with every single day_ in her eyes. Opening her mouth and sighing, Scully tapped her bloodied and gloved fingers on the autopsy table.

“Mulder, that still doesn't explain why cantharidin hasn't come up in the toxicological results.”

“Well, think about it Scully. Who hires prostitutes?” Mulder continued, undeterred, as if knowing she'd say this. Scully wondered how often her oaf of a partner practiced his speeches in front of mirrors before he turned them on her, because quite frankly she was impressed at his improvisation skills and the fact that he rarely if ever stuttered on any word he ever said. He would've been champion of a high school debate team if he had only dropped the whole...extra-terrestrial _everything_.

But hey, at least this one wasn't aliens. Yet.

“Well,” Scully said, humoring him, “Mostly wealthy people, often middle-aged and going through a mid-life crisis, lonely and looking for company, or looking for power over someone if they can get it since the laws in this country don't protect prostitutes against their clients which is why cases like the Red Light case often get overlooked. Getting overlooked would be my guess as to why cantharidin hasn't come up in the results even though this case is large enough to be on the news.”

“How likely is it for cantharidin to go unnoticed?” Mulder asked, musing over her words despite believing in his theory more.

“To be quite honest, fairly unlikely.” Scully answered, understanding where he was about to go. Mulder was quiet for a while, processing this particular answer. Scully glanced over at Starling, who quickly looked away, tapping her pen on her notepad idly.

“Alright,” he finally said, “I need to look into when the FBI got hold of the case. It's just possible that our law enforcement has a middle-aged mid-life crisis incubus with a little pocket change to spare who knows enough to hide results.”

“I'm almost done with the autopsy,” Scully said, “Should I come meet you at the crime scene?”

“See you there, and bring Starling with you, I want to check for fly appendages.”

Scully sighed harshly, “Starling is coming with me, yes, but _no_ you may _not._ ” Starling swallowed again, keeping her gaze keen.

She could just feel Mulder shrug it off, “Say hello to her for me; I promise I don't mean any harm.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. See you there.”

Scully hung up with a sigh and finally looked at the reading on the scale, repeating it to Starling so she could write it down. As the young agent did so, she kept glancing up at the back of Scully's head.

“Did your partner find something?” Starling asked, her voice quieter than it was before as though she was cautiously lowering her shields in front of Scully. Must've been that watching her perform the autopsy and one-on-one deal with Mulder over the phone had earned Scully some respect from the young agent.

“I guess that's a way to put it,” Scully muttered, turning back to the body.

“What did he find?”

Scully cut away at fatty tissue to get at the kidneys, her motions quick and direct, “Trust me, Agent Starling, there are some things you're better off not knowing. Not for your own safety, but for your own sanity and for any shreds of respect you might have for Agent Mulder if you heard anything about him at Quantico.”

“What about you, do you respect Agent Mulder?”

Scully let more organs slide from her fingers onto the scale with a plop, not looking at Starling as she was now trying to finish up as quickly as possible, “To a degree.”

Starling smirked and nodded before writing down the rest of the autopsy.

 

~~

 

“Scully!” Mulder called over to her as he jogged up. Scully shut the door on the passenger side as Starling stepped out of the driver's seat, “I got here before forensics was completely done sweeping the place,”

“Find anything?” Scully asked, moving quickly to be in between her partner and Starling, for both their sakes. Mulder nodded and pulled out a small prescription bottle from his pocket.

“Actual Spanish fly, we can have the pills analyzed to see if there are lethal doses of it,”

Scully took the evidence from him, “Well, at the very least we could try and trace this to a pharmacist, yes,”

Starling hunched her shoulders to hide the side of her face and began walking quite briskly, her collars popped up to graze her cheeks. As Mulder began to describe what he saw at the crime scene to Scully her eyes followed the young agent, Mulder's voice fading into the background. Police outside of the apartment building turned their heads to watch her even if they had been writing down something important in their notepads. _Tabloid girl_. The phrase echoed in Scully's head as Starling disappeared into the building as quickly as possible. As soon as she was gone each of the police officers went back to their duties as if she hadn't distracted them from it in the first place. Scully reached out a hand and stopped Mulder at his elbow.

“What, what is it, Scully?” he asked, stopping in his tracks to face her. Scully heaved a breath.

“I meant it when I said you caused quite a stir, I don't think she likes being referred to as a tabloid, _spooky_.” Scully muttered to him, her grip still on his elbow. Mulder closed his mouth and nodded slightly, feeling the emphasis she was putting into her point.

“Did you notice that everyone was staring at her just now?” Mulder muttered back.

“Mulder, that has nothing to do with the case, I was just making sure you didn't provide a _problem_ for her working with us.”

“Including you, Scully,” Mulder continued on as if she hadn't said anything, “I was watching you the whole time, your eyes didn't leave her.”

“Is sympathy for her really too much to understand?” Scully hissed. Mulder raised his eyebrows.

“This morning it was jealousy, what exactly happened during the autopsy?” he asked.

“I had to spend time cleaning up _your mess_ so Starling would actually stay with us without thinking we're insane.” she let go of his elbow to give him a slap on his arm with the back of her hand. Mulder didn't flinch.

“That's quite a feat,” he commented, half-faking being impressed, “But she's encountered worse than us,”

“ _Please_ do not mention that to her,” Scully barked, strangely feeling protective now that she realized Starling was sensitive to being seen in the tabloids. Mulder, despite her, smirked, and Scully could feel her eyes turn icy in anticipation.

“I guess I shouldn't mention to her that if incubi and succubi have insect counterparts I think she'd be an ant or a bee or some other social insect, huh?”

Scully adjusted her footing as she stood in front of her partner, his grin growing at her reaction. Honestly she didn't know if it was better or if it was worse that Mulder was aware of how insane he sounded. Maybe it was a good thing he could get all of his craziest theories out to her first before facing the actual world, but that didn't mean Scully was always grateful for her sacrifice if she had to sit around and hear _this_ before every case.

“Agent Scully! Agent Mulder!” Starling's voice rang out from a third story window, calling the two in question to look up. She was leaning out, her hair pulled over one side of her neck, “I...I think you should come up here and look at this.”

Mulder glanced at Scully with a smile and shrugged, making his way into the building. Scully followed as usual, staring sternly at the back of his head as if she could will him to keep his damn mouth shut about Starling. The agent in question greeted them at the door, hurrying them into the apartment to the bed. The sheets were sweat-stained and tussled from its final users. Police tape marked the shape of the victim on the sheets, but Starling was pointing to a strange stain near the victim's legs.

“Semen?” Mulder asked. Starling nodded, but it was slow and unsure, and she looked specifically at Scully for an answer. Scully pulled gloves on and approached the stain as Mulder hovered over her. Taking a q-tip, she dabbed at the stain curiously.

“That's...,” Mulder coughed, “That's um. Very viscous stuff.”

“It is...,” Scully said, concentrating enough that her voice was distant, “Given the time of death and that it's almost noon now, any samples should be dried...,”

“What are you saying,” Mulder asked as she pulled the q-tip up. Goop from the stain followed, causing Scully to knit her brows together as she studied it, “That...you know what, I don't have a good quip for this.”

Starling sighed behind them as if she was glad Mulder couldn't say anything. Scully snapped for a petri dish quickly—not caring who would go and fetch it for her. Mulder turned, looking around until his eyes met Starling. Starling turned and looked around just the same as him until one of the members of the local forensic team popped up with one and handed it specifically to Starling, who handed it to Mulder, who handed it to Scully. Scully placed the substance in the dish, wiping the q-tip off as much as possible before shining a light on the dish.

“There are small clusters in the substance,” Scully mumbled as she turned the petri dish this way and that. Mulder squatted down next to her on one side, which she was used to, but soon Starling squatted on her other side, which she wasn't used to. Despite the goosebumps that had appeared on the back of her neck, she tried to ignore the agitation Starling caused her and kept speaking her thoughts, “They almost look like...,”

“Like what?” Starling asked. Scully had to blink and regain her thoughts, not used to Starling's voice.

“Fly eggs? Egg sacs?” Mulder provided in all sincerity, glancing over at Scully. Scully looked at Mulder. She hadn't wanted to be the one to say it. She swallowed, bringing her lower lip inward.

“Well. The lab will be able to tell.”

“Ten to one, team Mulder,” he couldn't hold back his smile nor his excitement, “How much you want to bet they're of the variety of insect that carries cantharidin?”

“Starling,” Scully said, effectively ignoring Mulder as she straightened back out, “Please take this back to our labs, but I'm the only one to examine it, is that clear?”

Starling nodded, “Understood. I do have some friends over at the Smithsonian who would be able to tell if it was insect-related.”

Both Mulder and Scully nodded in approval, but Scully was the one to speak, “Good, but all the same, I'd like to keep this between us. For reasons probably best not spoken here.”

“Judging by your phone conversation, I can guess why,” Starling agreed, which gained another approving nod from Mulder, one behavioral scientist to the other.

“Excuse me, but is the bureau withholding evidence from the local police?”

All three turned to see a middle-aged detective with peppered hair, lines on his face that pointed to too much stress and frowning. His tie was a shimmering green, standing out against his darker green coat. Mulder stiffened and gave a quick glance at Scully. Such a wardrobe meant he had some bank account to back it up. Scully shifted on her feet again, trying to cover up that she had caught on to Mulder's line of thought.

“No,” Scully spoke for all three of them, “We're just going to make sure this goes through the highest technology possible for examination. This is, after all, the sixth victim.”

“True,” The man in green nodded, “High time we called the bureau in. Name's Detective Lytta, I'm the head detective of this case.” The man nodded a little with an awkward bow, “Well, until the bureau was called in of course.”

“Of course,” Scully echoed, unconsciously catching a habit from Starling. The detective nodded again, then noticed Starling's auburn hair from in between the shoulders of Mulder and Scully.

“We're quite thankful for it, really, especially sending agents of such high regard to us.”

Mulder and Scully looked at each other in confusion, since neither of them were in _such high regards_ and any reputation that preceded them was questionable at best. Their minds worked like clockwork together and they came to the realization at the same time and looked back at Starling, who had stiffened back up like she had been in Mulder's office, her chin jutting out and her eyes fixed forward. Prideful, but weak.

“Y-yes, well,” Starling stammered, “We'll definitely do our best.”

Detective Lytta grinned, nearly beaming at Starling's words, and stepped aside to allow them to further investigate the crime scene. He was soon called away to the front of the apartment, probably to deal with the press chomping at the bits to get at the crime scene especially with Starling fabled to be here. Mulder leaned down and muttered in Scully's ear.

“Mr. Green, in the bedroom, with the Spanish fly pills.”

Scully smirked, but her mind was elsewhere and she gave Starling an extra glance over her shoulder.

She didn't look okay.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowowowowowow funky dream time with body horror pertaining to injured animals
> 
> this is also, iirc, the first attempt at writing any of these characters--ever, so. b-booyah

“Your friends are quite interesting, Starling,” Scully commented as she walked with the young agent out of the museum, “But at least they brought to light that those were beetle eggs. Of some sort.”

Starling hummed, a little awkwardly, as her brisk pace took her out of the building as fast as possible. Scully easily kept up pace, but she had noted Starling's pursed silence in front of the entomologists, particularly avoiding the gaze of one of them. Taking her hand out of her pocket so she wouldn't have to feel the vial of viscous liquid containing beetle eggs, Scully let her gloved hand swing between her and Starling's hip as they left. It had grown dark in the short hour they were inside the museum. Starling didn't even seem to notice, her gaze on the wet pavement beneath her shoes.

All three of them had spent the better part of the day scurrying around trying to interview any sex worker that would let them talk to them. Surprisingly, the one whom had given the most information was a drag queen who went by the pseudonym Lipstick Tomcat. Knowing the files of the Buffalo Bill case and its close connection to men in dresses (so to speak, if one could call a skin suit a dress) Scully kept a close eye on Starling throughout the interview. It was strange, seeing herself grow protective over a few work-filled hours. As if she was understanding what Starling was feeling despite never having been on the front page of a tabloid herself. Unremarkable Special Agent Dana Scully—never in her life had she grown more attached to that idea, and she wondered if Starling was in fact jealous of _her_ now instead of the other way around.

The girl had been relaxed, though, even warm as Lipstick Tomcat joked heartily about the women she knew, naming to them by the street corners they frequented to protect the innocent but at least willing to identify them in pictures. Starling was the one to ask why Lipstick Tomcat was answering their questions, and the queen looked grave, the mirth leaving her face as if she was staring at the dead bodies themselves.

“No one cares for these women. Not even themselves.”

Scully's expression didn't change, but her breathing did.

Mulder had leaned forward, then, asking, “Do you care for yourself, Lipstick Tomcat?” She eyed him hard, then, tightening her jaw, replied.

“Some would say yes. I wouldn't say so.”

The women working the streets were always scared, but now they were even more terrified. Mulder poured over the files, profiling and muttering words over and over to himself to try and deduce a pattern between the killings, drawing lines between where the deaths happened and what street names Lipstick Tomcat had given them. Keeping everything just between the three of them for the moment, given the suspicion towards the local police force, Mulder narrowed down an area stakeout that he would lead himself. Scully had offered to cover more ground with Starling, but Mulder shook his head.

“We don't know exactly all of how this guy picks up women. Maybe it's the normal routine anyone would go through to pick up a prostitute, but maybe he has something else up his sleeve. He's only attacked biological women so far, which may have been why Lipstick Tomcat was more open to us than others. Sorry, Scully, the risk is too great, and I need you to be around if something wrong happens and I need back up.”

 _Or worse_ , was the implied end to that sentence. Scully was seconds away from protesting the decision but Mulder was right. Say the man emulated the Spanish fly in more ways than one and had some sort of aphrodisiac spray. She had been...so to speak, _entranced_ by a walking aphrodisiac before. No doubt Mulder remembered walking into _that_. Those thoughts aside, she had proven to be more than useful behind the scenes researching and pulling up whatever obscure evidence she could find while Mulder sat in a car munching on a two-ton bag of sunflower seeds.

Scully smirked at the young woman walking beside her and attempted to lighten the mood, “You seemed alright around Lipstick Tomcat today,”

“She was funny, and seemed trustworthy,” Starling said, her voice a little distant before she snapped to the present and glanced curiously over at Scully, “Why...Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Scully mused, suddenly realizing she may have walked herself into a corner, “I guess the Buffalo Bill case isn't exactly unfamiliar to anyone at the FBI.”

“Or the whole world, for that matter,” Starling muttered bitterly. Scully swallowed hard to cover a wince, trying to keep her pace steady with Starling. Their partnership or friendship or whatever was slowly coming off of the eggshells, but Scully could tell it would be a while before it actually stepped off any of them and onto solid ground.

“At any rate, Buffalo Bill wasn't violent because he wanted to be a woman,” Starling said with practiced ease. Hours and hours and hours of research stood behind her words as she spoke. Scully imagined her, curled on a chair in front of piles of papers and books, fervently researching her target's desires much like Mulder would if he was profiling a known killer. But instead she imagined this was after Buffalo Bill's death—Starling trying to reassure herself of the world, that Buffalo Bill was an outlier, at his heart a very sick man because of the gruesome killings he performed to force his dreams to come true. Not for any other reason. Not because of those he identified with. The corners of Scully's lips pushed upwards though she didn't realize it. Adoration, a word she wouldn't admit to, adoration of what Starling looked like in her mind's eye even though she had no basis for what she imagined to be true. Adoration that Starling was at her heart a very sincere and good person if she spent personal time to reassure herself of the truth.

“How long did it take you to accept him for what he was?” Scully asked as she unlocked her car. Starling sat herself into the passenger seat, visibly relaxing only when the doors shut around her.

“Not very long, if you count it by days. But pretty long if you count it by hours, and realize I didn't sleep.”

“Some cases can do that to you...,” Scully trailed off as she put her hands on her wheel. She focused on flexing her gloved fingers, thinking of Minneapolis. Thinking of Pfaster. Thinking of his violent fetishization and useless killing after stalking and tormenting the girls, tricking them into his own personal trophy rooms.

“Agent Scully...?” Starling asked. Scully started, blinking rapidly to shake herself out of walking down that dark road. Even Mulder didn't know that she had slipped that pathway more times than he thought—she was usually quite good at hiding things like that, even from him. Starling seemed to be different; Starling reminded her of her and she guessed that was the reason why. Or maybe it was the fact that Starling had to deal with Hannibal Lecter and would understand. Either or, maybe both.

She brushed off a shiver as if it was a reaction to the damp chill in the air, “Did you eventually get some sleep, though?”

Starling's face flushed red and the seat belt buckle slipped from her hand. Fumbling to find it again, she jammed it into the fastener. Her hair, dark in the sparse lighting, covered her cheeks but Scully could nearly feel the heat rise from her skin.

“I guess so,” Starling mumbled, “Er...um. Yes. Eventually. With. One of those entomologists.”

Ah.

Hence the awkwardness.

She had been so ready to volunteer their help for the case that Scully hadn't thought twice about it until she now realized that Starling hadn't been expecting it to be as awkward as it had been. A one or several night stand ending abruptly when Starling further pursued the FBI—she was perhaps both deeply embarrassed and quite ashamed at the same time.

Been there, done that. Even if in feeling.

“I'm guessing the bug sex wasn't that good, huh?” Scully said, an attempt at a joke despite the fact it hit a little too close to home with Mulder's theories on their current case. Starling laughed, surprised she had, and flipped her hair behind her ear as Scully started the engine. Righting herself in her seat, Starling pushed her head back against the rest.

“Bug sex was never that good.” Starling confessed lowly with a disgusted whine. Scully glanced over at her as she continued, “I kind of enjoy not being handled like a dorm room fleshlight.”

Scully snorted, pulling out of the parking lot. Starling then took the opportunity to direct Scully through the city towards her apartment; it was late enough to call it a day after some quick instant dinner to snarf down. The two women were silent as Scully drove. Fortunately the silence wasn't as awkward as it was in the autopsy room, and _certainly_ not as awkward as it first was in Mulder's office. Over the course of the day the sympathies of being women in the boys' club took over whatever steeliness they had regarded each other with. If nothing else, they could easily cooperate together. Partnership, in a way.

No one could replace Mulder by Scully's side, absolutely no one. But Scully was willing to set a safe place for Starling. She was going to need it in the coming months with the FBI breathing down her neck, the tabloids tugging at her shirt, and personal high expectations pulling at her hair. Scully had felt it all before. Strangely she hadn't felt it as strongly as she did the day she sat in front of the Smoking Man to be assigned to Mulder. Even knowing she was being pushed into the basement as a sort of thinly veiled ploy to keep her nose out of Big Respectable FBI Business, she still felt the rush of expectations and the plausible sting of failure.

Well. Scully guessed she _had_ failed them, particularly the Smoking Man. But in a way she had intended to, because it was all for the right reasons. And she was only able to do that because she had had Mulder there to support her. If anybody Starling would be paired with couldn't see past the tabloids...

Starling inhaled sharply and ducked down below the passenger window. Scully's eyesight was torn between the road and Starling's cramped form, avoiding whatever it was she saw.

“Starling? Starling, what is it?”

“My apartment building,” Starling gasped, “There's people outside of it, isn't there?”

Scully craned her neck, noticing several people in front of a building a block away, “There are, why?”

“They have cameras,” she hissed, “They always have cameras. And they don't care how far into the building they'll go.”

Tabloids. Paparazzi. Scully's heart grew cold at the sudden realization of the invasion of Starling's personal privacy. Hell Starling had probably _just_ moved in months if not weeks ago, and already her home wasn't safe from a constant wave of flash photography and people without morals yelling invasive questions. The shrill breaths she took told Scully more than she needed to know; that the questions gradually would grow louder and louder and more invasive as she spent more and more seconds in their vicinity. Starling, her head at her knees, turned to face Scully's direction, her eyes wide in panic and disgust as they stared into nothing. This confirmed Scully's suspicions. She reached over and placed a hand on Starling's back, pushing her lower ever so slightly.

“Stay down, they haven't seen you,” Scully murmured out of the corner of her mouth. Starling responded by curling up tighter, and Scully removed her hand and placed it clearly on the wheel. She allowed herself two glances at the paparazzi as she drove by, but beyond that she held her breath and kept her gaze straightforward so as not to betray Starling's position.

The girl didn't sit back up until Scully had made a turn two blocks down. Circling the block would do no good, and as Starling drew in a shaky breath she settled against the door of the car, pressing her cheek against the cool glass of the window.

“Fuckers,” she muttered, her breath misting against the glass. Scully felt a strong pang of sympathy, one that had been gradually building throughout the day.

“We aren't too far away from Georgetown. My apartment is there, and we can get some rest and go over the case for a bit.”

Starling twisted her mouth and pushed her cheek further against the window, staring out into the streets, “I don't know...,” she mumbled, “I don't like intruding...,”

“It's not an intrusion if I invite you in, especially since it's obvious you need a place to be for a while.”

“Is your apartment dark?” Starling asked, peeling her cheek away just enough so her voice could better reach Scully. Scully kept staring ahead and didn't think about how oddly specific her question had been. The car moved smoothly through the streets as Scully redirected away from Starling's apartment and towards her own.

“Mulder's is,” Scully admitted, “But mine isn't. White walls, carpet, lots of windows.”

“Good,” Starling mumbled quietly.

A thought whispered in the back of Scully's mind, intertwined with Mulder's words that morning much as she didn't want to even think about that.

Pictures of Buffalo Bill's house haunted Starling's mind. She would never outright assume that someone as put together as Scully would live in a place like that (although the comment about Mulder's apartment made her smirk in a weird way), but it had almost become a paranoid fear of hers now.

Almost as much as the lambs.

The way to Scully's apartment was a blur. They had stopped on the way, something like Chinese takeout, and the smell filled the car, making Starling's stomach growl and churn. Scully had laughed lightly at her, and Starling felt weird. She had been correct in assuming that Scully wasn't that much older than her, but it seemed she had simply _years_ on Starling's experience. Well, Scully was far more used to the FBI than she was at any rate. In such a stressful job as this (especially with a partner like Mulder) Starling supposed Scully grew up faster than she could count to ten. She wondered if that would happen to her as Scully opened the door to her apartment and let her enter first.

Blurs. Crab rangoon. Lo mein. Orange chicken. Scully muttering over the files that were strewn out all over her living room floor, coffee table, couch. Starling lounged on it, blazer hung up, shoes in a pile, and blouse loose around her neck. Her eyes, too, were scanning the pages with fervor. In a way it reminded her of Quantico, back with her roommate as they discussed notes and cross-referenced each other. It had been real back then with the Buffalo Bill case, but somehow it felt realer now. Perhaps it was the apartment that did it; a viable living space instead of a dingy dorm room. (Scully's apartment, too, was much more spacious than her modest studio closer to work.)

Before she realized it, Starling was nodding off, stretched out on Scully's couch as Scully peered over autopsy reports and the information given to them by the entomologists. The last thing Starling remembered from being awake was Scully adjusting her glasses on her smooth, freckled nose with a sigh.

Then the moths started fluttering.

Fat, dark moths with beating wings. Starling tried to bat them away and fumble her way towards a light. Everything was boarded up and pitch black, and everywhere she swung her hands a fuzzy thick moth was hitting against her fingers. Biting her lip to keep from screaming out, from showing weakness or alerting anyone to her position, she began to frantically swat and grab at the darkness until her fingers caught on a small protrusion.

A lamp flicked on, and for half a second she breathed in relief before the moths began to swarm, covering the light with their powdery black wings. Starling gasped in horror and disgust as little skulls stuck out of the back of the moth's necks, clattering and giggling at her and her fear.

“ _Skull-y Skull-y Skull-y!_ ” they cackled, congratulating one another on the hideous pun. Starling began to shout but she couldn't hear herself over the beating of wings and the pounding of the fat bodies against each other near her ears.

“ _Skull-y, Skull-y, Skull-y, look! Look!_ ”

All at once the moths fell from the lamp, carpeting the ground with their bodies. Starling stepped away, her heels sinking into the soft abdomens of the moths. The light filled the room, which was still dark and she couldn't see all the corners of the walls, but she could see the lamb.

It was laying on its side, starved, exhausted, covered in the viscous goop they had found at the crime scene earlier that day. Starling froze, watching the lamb's lips and anticipating its bleating, its screaming. She should scoop it up, run away with it into the night, neverminding the woods. But it looked stuck in the goop, it looked like it was already dead anyways, and Starling couldn't move a muscle.

“ _Clarice_ ,” the lamb's lips moved to say, driving knives into her spine as it spoke in Hannibal Lecter's voice, “ _Clarice, quid pro quo_.”

Her lips could only tremble.

“ _Clarice, Clarice, tell me everything about you. Make me understand. Give me your delicious mind. Your delicious brain._ ”

Starling gathered up the strength to take another step back into the piled bodies of the moths on the floor, and all of the sudden the lamb opened its mouth and started screaming, _shrieking_. The clusters in the goop quivered in response, hatching into thousands upon thousands of larva that quickly pupated to shimmering green beetles. Spanish flies.

“ _Clarice, Clarice, you don't understand_ ,” Hannibal's voice continued over the lamb's screaming. Starling started screaming herself as the flies swarmed her and she fell to the ground, the moths squishing underneath her weight.

“ _Agent Starling!_ ”

“ _Clarice, you don't understand. But I do. I do, Clarice, I know everything about you, and I know every lamb you've ever seen,_ ”

“ _Skully Skully Skully,_ ” a moth chittered as it dragged its dying body across the corpses of its brethren. Starling was flailing wildly, fighting off the Spanish flies, but somehow she could see the moth clamber its way to the lamb.

“ _Agent Starling!!_ ”

“ _And I know every lamb you ever will see._ ”

The moth chittering to itself crawled into the lamb's gaping mouth, forcing its pudgy body down its throat until the screams choked and gargled, the lamb being thrown into spasms as the moth wedged itself deeper and deeper into its esophagus.

“Starling!”

She jerked awake, realizing she had been for all intents and purposes screaming herself. A film of sweat made her skin sheen in the warm light of Scully's apartment. Scully herself was seated beside her, hands on either side of her head. Starling panted, her eyes wild and roving. The screams of the lamb still echoed in her pounding ears as if she couldn't allow herself a moment's respite. Even on days she believed them to be silent, the lambs still stared at her, waiting for their turn.

Scully's thumbs pushed up against her brow, raising her lids to examine her pupils. Dilated in terror and seemingly unable to focus on her face. Scully refrained from frowning, instead holding up a finger in what should've been Starling's line of sight.

“Agent Starling?” she gently coaxed, “Follow my finger.”

She slowly moved it from side to side. At first Starling seemed to skip the instructions, not knowing what to do, but she soon snapped out of it with a deep, meaningful breath, and followed Scully's finger.

“It was a nightmare,” Scully explained plainly as Starling continued to watch her finger move back and forth, “You're in my apartment, we were going over the Red Light case when you fell asleep. I found something interesting, but I figured I'd let you be until morning.”

Starling breathed, regaining herself, and tried to raise her head. It felt like it was filled with sand, but still she had to try.

“Something interesting, what is it?” she mumbled past clammy lips. Scully shifted, allowing Starling space while placing her hands against her shoulders for support.

“It can wait, Starling, you look awful.”

“No,” Starling tried to protest. Information about the case was the perfect anchor to take her thoughts away from the nightmare, “No, what is it?”

Scully twisted her mouth. Ah, so this was where she got the impression that Starling reminded her of herself. Still, stubborn is as stubborn does, and Starling was going to have a run for her money if she wanted to go up against Scully.

“Later, Agent Starling. You need some actual rest. I'll get you a blanket and a proper pillow, you look too tired to travel now, especially if the cameras are still fixed on your apartment.”

“Agent Scully...,” Starling muttered, struggling to push herself up to a sitting position.

“It's alright, I've done a hell of a lot more for a lot less,” Scully murmured encouragingly as she stood up and pulled a blanket from her linen closet.

“Have nightmares often, Starling?” Scully asked as she draped the blanket around her shoulders.

“C...Clarice.” Starling corrected, her brow knitting in confusion as to why she had said so. Scully paused, taken aback by Starling's— _Clarice's_ request. But it didn't last long, her hands resting warmly on the girl's shoulders. Clarice glanced at her, noticing for the first time that Scully had already changed into her pajamas. Silky, white, clean. A quick glance down at her own clothes found them soaked with sweat, rumpled, and filthy. She sighed.

“I...It's not a request to call you Dana, I just...I need someone else to say my name.” Clarice confessed softly. Someone, anyone, _someone_ other than _him_. She didn't have enough family to do that for her, and to think that the last time someone had earnestly called her Clarice had been a man in a mask that prevented him from eating someone's face alive...

She hadn't realized she was in the process of fainting even after Scully grabbed her tight around the waist, supporting her.

“Star— _Clarice_ ,” Scully corrected herself, “Do you need me to draw you a bath?”

The thought made embarrassment and horror run rampant through the girl's body and she shook her head as vigorously as possible, her auburn hair brushing against Scully's cheeks. Scully stiffened at the touch, trying to regain herself so she could move closer to Clarice to offer more support.

“I just...I just need to lay down for a while, that's all.”

“Rest is good,” Scully agreed, “But will you sleep?”

Clarice didn't answer. Scully drew away every so slightly to look at the girl's pale, ashen face. Her lids were heavy and tired, but her eyes were still wild beneath them. Tight lips loosening, her jaw hung slack as she breathed through her mouth, in, out, in, out. Sweat discolored her, turning her soft hair into straw. Scully's icy eyes melted as she stared at Starling. _Succubus_. How could Mulder say such a thing? Clarice was tired. Exhausted. It was etched in every invisible line on her face, spilling out of her mouth with each pained breath. Here she was, a tired little girl that here in Scully's apartment looked for all the world just as ordinary as Scully was, herself. She didn't have a face for the tabloids nor did she carry the ability to bear that weight. Young and accomplished? Perhaps that was true.

Perhaps Clarice was forced into it.

Because all of what Scully was seeing was that she didn't even have control over her own sleep, and her wild eyes and steely behavior and guarded shoulders all seemed to point to the one thing Clarice wanted the most: control. Control over herself, and nothing more.

“Clarice...,” Scully murmured, and the girl shook upon hearing her name, “Clarice, what do you need?”

“I...,” Clarice stammered after a while, “I don't know. Silence. Sleep.”

Scully nodded, understanding without needing to fully know her. She tightened her arm around Clarice's waist, warm and assuring. Silence. Sleep. Okay. She could do that.

She was moments away from standing up to leave Clarice be when the girl relaxed, wholly, and pushed comfortably against Scully. Scully froze, her hands leaving Clarice to hover in shock as the weight of the girl pulled the two against the couch cushions with a wince. Clarice's head lolled until she found a soft and warm cushion above Scully's collarbone, the top of her head pressing against her cheek.

Scully's heart beat. How close she was to her—she wasn't even used to being this close to Mulder unless something horrible had happened to either of them. It was her stark instinct to pull away and leave Clarice be, have her build up impenetrable walls so she could take care of herself. That was Scully's approach to things; she had to rely on herself and thus she had to take care of herself and never dare let anyone see that she may not always have the capacity to do so.

But the whispers in the back of her mind spoke up. She had promised Clarice a safe place in her mind. Just because it was her instinct to walk away doesn't mean it was Clarice's, and it sure as hell didn't mean that Clarice wanted that. The girl's arms wrapped limply around Scully's belly, weak and exhausted. Scully placed a hand over Clarice's wrist, allowing her other arm to close over her waist again. Sleep, she couldn't promise her.

But silence, she could.

Scully pressed her cheek against the top of Clarice's head, her thumbs moving in gentle rhythms to calm the girl into resting. Staring at the papers strewn about her living room, Scully occasionally hushed the girl's whimpers as she dipped in and out of slumber. No full words ever left her mouth, keeping Clarice's wish for silence true as the night wore on into morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah ok! lipstick tomcat's chapter. i'mma be honest i haven't read this since i wrote it, i have. i have no memory of this place.
> 
> other than that, the bunch of names that are listed are heavy, heavy references to a game series i have a deep love for

Harsh, shrill ringing startled Scully awake. There was an ache in her lower back and in her neck, her jaw felt dull and heavy. Lifting her head up, she felt strands of hair stick to her face and she groaned a little. Her makeshift pillow shifted against her shoulder, still perhaps asleep.

It was then that Scully remembered (or rather realized) that she had let Starling— _Clarice—_ fall asleep against her and that despite her best efforts she had done the same. Clarice's auburn hair sticking to her smooth but reddened cheek tickled her as she groggily pushed files on the coffee table aside, unearthing her cell phone. For some reason she had liked to think that Clarice was still somehow asleep as she reached for her phone, trying her best not to move or disturb the girl from her shoulder. It took some effort and several papers and files fell to the floor before she could finally wrap her fingers around her phone. Pulling the antenna up as she brought it to her ear, she whispered into it, tired and still careful that she might wake Clarice.

“Scully.”

“Scully it's me,” Mulder answered from the other line, “Sorry to wake you.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered, the sleepy lilt not leaving her voice. Normally the urgency of a case would force her to waken quicker, but she'd chalk it up to sleeping awkwardly sitting up on a couch. Yeah, that's what it was. The couch. Not the gentle breath warming the slant of her collar bone.

“So nothing happened last night,” Mulder started, which somehow sent a pang of panic through Scully and she shifted, suddenly more awake. Was he...Did he think...Did he _know_? That Clarice stayed over? Would he think something _else_ happened? “Nothing really, no new dead bodies, which is good news y'know, but we have no leads on who this might be although we took down the license plates of all the cars that stopped at the districts we patrolled,”

Scully relaxed, visibly, and Clarice adjusted against her. Mulder _hadn't_ suspected or insinuated anything, he was just rambling and his word choice had...set her off like a firework. So to speak. She glanced down at the girl. If she was still asleep or resting she was doing a damn good job of pulling the look off. Scully's eyelids lowered in relaxation as she studied the messy sheen of her auburn hair against her gentle ivory sweater. The nightmare had shaken her last night as if she had been used to it, been used to the imagery and sounds that she heard. Dreams were something Mulder studied more than her; she could spew off a thousand different scientific oddities about dreams and explain how they happened and what happened to make them appear, which sleep cycles did what, et cetera. But as to what the images were, what they meant, what they could mean to a person? That was Mulder's field, and he was far more prone to take Jung's theories and dive off the deep end with them into something more grandiose than she could ever dream up.

What she was saying was that she wondered what it was that Clarice saw in the nightmare. Scully had, long ago, started to block out and repress her nightmares, lie to herself about what they were about and what they contained. To Mulder, she always slept fine. Maybe Clarice too always 'slept fine', and her cover had been blown by having a nightmare on Scully's couch. Absent-mindedly, Scully moved the hand of the arm that Clarice was resting against. Her thumb rubbed gently against the curve of Clarice's waist. Scully was quite sure that if Clarice had had another nightmare, she would've known, would've been startled awake by her discomfort and pleadings.

Silence, Clarice had demanded silence. Silence that Scully provided was a grace to her but in a way Scully got the impression it wasn't quite the silence that she desperately sought like a lost nomad looking for water in the desert. The idea struck Scully as pitying, though that wasn't quite the right word. She didn't pity Clarice. She felt pain because of her, pain over the fact that she couldn't get silence even in her sleep. Shouting paparazzi, bold tabloids, and bright cameras haunted her waking hours, and then Clarice wasn't even allowed peace and quiet where most people could find it. Guilt, small and personal, knotted in Scully's gut over her initial judgments and jealousy of the girl and she moved her hand upwards, pulling her auburn hair aside to expose the smooth curve of her ear. Scully brushed her thumb against it, wondering what her ears heard that made her crave silence.

“Scully?” Mulder asked, “Scully did you hear what I just said?”

“Huh?” Scully's lower lip dropped and stayed open, too concentrated on Clarice.

“Lipstick Tomcat has been taken into custody.”

Scully's fingers closed over a lock of Clarice's hair and her eyes shot open, intense, “ _What_. For what? How? Prostitution?”

“No,” Mulder said, disapproval thickening and quieting his voice. Scully got the impression that there were others milling about him, others he was suspicious of as he continued, “She's been taken into custody over the Red Light murders.”

“But she—,” Scully cut herself off as she started to shift, pulling her arm out from underneath Clarice while struggling to keep her undisturbed, “She could be a suspect, but she's been the most cooperative out of anyone in this case, why would she give us so much information when she herself is the killer?”

“I don't—Listen, Scully,” Mulder said, exasperated, “I need you here, with the autopsy reports you specifically filed to make sure nothing's been missed. Can you get Agent Starling? I can't reach her apartment phone, and she can help comb the room with me,”

Scully nodded though she knew he couldn't see it, “Yeah, Clarice and I will be right over, give us twenty—no, thirty minutes.”

She waited for his final affirmation before he'd hang up, but instead he was silent. The only indication she had that he was still on the line was the muddled background noise of a nondescript city street in mid-morning rush.

“Mulder, what? What else?” she said, finally slipping her arm out from behind Clarice's neck. The girl stirred and rolled away from her, massaging her neck and keeping her eyes closed as if she could steal more minutes of slumber.

“... _Clarice_?”

“What?” Scully asked, exasperated herself.

“ _Clarice_ , Scully?” Mulder asked incredulously, “When did you start calling her _Clarice_?”

Scully froze, her mouth hanging open before she closed it tight. Excuses and explanations raced through her mind, but it was too late. It was Mulder. He had already jumped to the worst possible scenario. Or best, if he took his eccentric collection of video tapes into question. And there was _no doubt_ he did.

“For that matter what do you mean by _give us thirty minutes_. Us? _Us?_ Scully is there something you want to tell me?” His voice turned upwards in almost a snickering way; he was taunting and making fun of her and she could just see his lips curl into a grin he couldn't help. A desperate glance over at Clarice revealed that she had finally opened her eyes, lazily examining her room before they drifted over to her. Scully's eyes were wider than they needed to be, and she quickly looked away.

“I'll be there, Mulder. Bye.”

Beep. Slam the antenna down, toss the phone on the table to knock even more files off the edge. Clarice stared at it, then looked to Scully for an explanation. Scully sighed.

“Lipstick Tomcat has been arrested.”

“ _What?_ ” Clarice blurted, her eyebrows curving in worry. Scully stood up.

“Mulder's there at her apartment and wants to comb through it before questioning her. He wants you there specifically, I have business gathering the autopsy reports.”

“Me...?” Clarice muttered, suddenly guarded and suspicious. Scully felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as she shuffled files and papers together into a neat stack. Clarice's hesitance was clear and Scully felt it stronger than the air in her own lungs, “Why does he want me there, and not you?”

“My guess? Behavioral sciences. Studying the apartment for deviant behavior, or lack thereof, to figure out if Lipstick Tomcat is the murderer.”

“She's not,” Clarice was quick to defend, “Whatever Mulder says I don't think she is.”

Scully bit the inside of her lip, “Judging by the tone in his voice, I don't think he thinks that either,” Scully lined up the stack of files and papers neatly with the corner of her coffee table before brushing herself off and heading towards her bedroom closet, “Mulder is empathetic, quick to give judgments as to who's innocent or not and very stubborn to stand by those judgments.”

“Succubus...,” Clarice muttered bitterly as Scully disappeared into her room. The red-haired woman called for clarification, missing the word Clarice had said, but she simply lied and said she was stretching.

_Very stubborn to stand by those judgments._

“How...How long will the autopsy reports take, Agent Scully?”

Scully was glad Clarice couldn't see the jerk as she referred to her as her full title. _Just Scully would be fine. Really._ Pulling out a silk blouse and a black double-breasted jacket, Scully responded from her room, a thought occurring to her along the way.

“I'll probably meet you at the detention center to question her. And...you need a change of clothes, don't you?”

Clarice folded her arms into her sides and gave a quiet _yes,_ “I don't...If we stop by my apartment please make it quick, I don't know if the cameras are still out there and I'd rather not...linger...,”

Oh no. Oh no, Scully wouldn't dream of putting her through that, and the realization that she wouldn't do that to Clarice made her stomach flip in confusion. This was way too short of a time to be feeling this sort of protectiveness over someone. Over a child? Maybe—no, not maybe, _yes definitely_. Because the children she encountered never had anyone else looking out for them. Scully bit her plush lip. Clarice was no child. Stop it, Scully.

Stop chanting Mulder's words in the back of your mind. She's not a _succubus_ , social or otherwise, she's a goddamn exhausted human being tired of being in the spotlight and she just wants to do her job and do it right. Same as Scully. Were it not for Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter, Clarice would be just as plain and unremarkable as she was. She had to keep that in mind. Fame had twisted her life for the worse. Folding clothes in her arms, she stepped back out into the living room to offer them to Clarice as an alternative to going to her apartment.

Blue eyes against the contrast of her auburn hair turned to look at Scully and her heart froze, fluttered a little, then resumed its normal pulse.

Right.

Unremarkable, just like her. Completely unremarkable.

Right.

 

~~

 

The elevator was broken and it looked like it would never be fixed. Clarice's hand slid along the worn railing of the staircase as she climbed to the third floor. Lipstick Tomcat's apartment building was old, bordering between “quaint” and “probably should be condemned”. Any decoration vaguely resembling art nouveau was covered in dust. Beneath the layers of dust there was a layer of grime, and beneath the grime she could only guess were various species of mold festering and growing. She sniffed a little, the air thick and suffocating. Each window pane seemed dirtier than the last—the landlord really had no love for this place. Clarice was uneasy, it was dark and dirty and at one point she saw a moth flutter in the corner. A big, black one, with a white marking on the back of its neck. Sucking in a breath, she kept moving, trying to keep the moth in her peripherals lest she realize it was a hallucination, or worse, _real_.

302\. Tomcat's apartment. The door was already open, police tape already deterring common folk from entering. Clarice flashed her FBI badge, what still felt like a newly minted thing, to the guard and ducked underneath the tape.

Lipstick Tomcat's apartment showed the care she took into her life. There were spatterings of grime in the corners of her walls, but that was about it. The place was comfortably messy, many blankets and dresses and fabrics strewn everywhere, but methodical enough that there were places to stand, walk, sit, lay down. It wasn't a big apartment, just a studio with a small bathroom. Curtains and fabrics hung from the walls and ceiling; if they were going to arrest Tomcat for anything else it'd just be fire hazards. The windows were clean and open, a fresh breeze wafting through. The sun made the colors of the fabric on her walls simultaneously light up and comfortably enclose the space. Tomcat was at ease here, Clarice could tell, and Tomcat remained to be a person comfortable in who she was and what she did.

Mulder stepped out of the bathroom, half-heartedly handing an evidence bag to a nearby officer. It contained a used condom, no doubt heading towards the lab for DNA analysis. To Special Agent Dana Scully and _only_ Special Agent Dana Scully, that was Mulder's order. Seeing Clarice in the entryway, he raised his eyebrows as a greeting and motioned for her to come in as he moved into what could be construed as the living room though the bed was a part of it. Clarice watched carefully as Mulder's tall frame filled the room, a dark figure in the colorful fabrics. Mulder pressed his lips up, turning them inwards as he turned in a circle, gazing at the apartment.

“The queen's got taste in weaving gold from straw. Enjoy the trip up here?”

Yeah, the dark, enclosed stairwell with dirty windows. The one that made her skin prickle in memory of Buffalo Bill's house. Clarice turned her chin up to regard him, her lips tight and thin. Her nose still felt violated from the moldy atmosphere, and she was afraid that the moth had followed her in here.

Maybe it had. Mulder was dark and tall. Though his eyes seemed to show an eagerness for her being there Clarice could only interpret it as brown-nosing, or even better, a way to test his _succubus_ theory on her. As long as they were flinging wild theories, maybe she should accuse him of being a moth...incubus or whatever he was thinking.

“I suppose,” she responded curtly, “If we weren't talking about mold.”

An awkward smile flashed across Mulder's mouth, and he stepped to the side to let her stand where he was, “First impressions?”

 _First impression was you calling me a fucking succubus._ Clarice seethed in her head. The anger grew from an intense burning sensation just behind her ears. It didn't matter what Agent Scully had said to her before dropping her off. Then again, Scully didn't say much. Clarice got the impression that when it mattered Scully would defend her partner to the grave, but was content enough with people drawing their own conclusions. Well, Clarice's conclusion was that Mulder was a creep. What was the name they called him around the offices? Spooky? That didn't begin to cover it, but Scully would bristle at the suggestion, she knew. God, why did she have to be the one to be here, why couldn't Scully be here to temper the storm that Clarice might let happen if Mulder tried anything on her? Why does everything have to be _insects_? Still, she studied the room, desperately trying to avoid Mulder's direct eye contact.

“My first impression is that they shouldn't have arrested her.”

“Quite a conclusion to draw from just an apartment, don't you think, Agent Starling?” he said with a smirk.

She turned her head, her cold eyes blazing furiously at him, “You tell me, _you're_ supposed to be the experienced behavioral scientist here.”

Mulder leaned back, holding up his hands to protest innocence, “I was joking! I was joking.” There he goes, telling someone flat out that he was kidding them. All the other male agents had done similar with her, “I forget, you're not Scully.”

“No,” she reacted harshly, “I'm not. Now, no one's told me _why_ Lipstick Tomcat was put into custody. This room, this apartment it's...,”

_It's nothing like Buffalo Bill._

“It's not what we're looking for.”

Mulder's brows dropped and he swallowed, swinging his hand in front of his neck as a sign for her to not ask that question, not just yet, anyways. She raised a brow, watching as he gestured towards the meandering officers who were gathering their evidence and leaving. With a harsh sigh, she folded her arms in front of her and shut up until the officers were all gone.

“Lipstick Tomcat was taken into custody by an officer who was _not_ on my stakeout team,” Mulder explained finally, “Initially for suspicions of drug use, but somewhere down the line it got twisted into being the prime suspect for the murders.”

“ _How_ ,” Clarice spat. Mulder shook his head and raised a hand to drive his point home.

“All I know is that Detective Lytta was the one to bring Tomcat in. Detective Lytta who I specifically _requested_ to not be on the stakeout team. Are...Are those your clothes?”

Clarice glared at him, and he stammered to explain, “They...Really look like Scully's. Do all agents shop at the same department store?”

She bristled. If this was...Even if he was genuinely getting distracted by her appearance through some force he _decided_ not to control, it...One wrong word and Clarice would be back in the psychiatric ward, talking to Hannibal Lecter through glass as he taunted her with his _quid pro quos_ and invasive questions. No. She couldn't have this.

Especially not when it was true, that she was wearing Scully's clothes and comfortable though they may have been they were still unfamiliar and it only helped to set Clarice on edge.

“The case, Agent Mulder. I'm here for the case.”

He blinked, and she swore he saw a flash of worry in his eyes before he breathed deeply, continuing slow as if he was forcing himself to, “I didn't want Lytta on the team since he's my own suspect but I don't have any hard evidence to prove it. But if he thinks we suspect him then arresting Lipstick Tomcat was an act of fear. At the very least we're running a thorough autopsy in an environment he can't control at the Bureau. If we find cantharidin in the bodies and in the semen—egg?—samples it can't be ruled as a natural death anymore, and he has to show his creepy little bug face to the court of law.”

“Agent Mulder I...,” Clarice tried, _tried_ not to look at him like she looked at Lecter. How did Scully put up with this? What he was saying could be right at home next to her face in the flashy tabloids., “I don't quite follow the second part.”

He inhaled slowly, still trying to control his breathing; yet he still seemed to spew that paragraph of information in one breath. Clarice eyed him warily as he moved around her to the door. She jerked away from him, he, fortunately, didn't seem to notice.

“Open your mind up, Starling, let's go, chop chop! Scully's probably on her way to the detention center so she can explain it in layman's terms for you.”

Layman's terms? You mean, don't mind him, he's nuts?

“Oh, Agent Starling,” Mulder paused at the door frame, turning on his heel to face her. She looked at him, not knowing what next to expect out of his eccentric mouth.

“Do you prefer bees or ants?”

 

~~

 

“ _Cantharidin_ ,” Scully declared, slapping the file in Mulder's hands. Detective Lytta was questioning Lipstick Tomcat just beyond the one-way window. His angry voice was plagued with static over the microphone, making it easier for the three agents to ignore him as white noise as they spoke to each other. Mulder flipped open the file, low enough so Clarice could see it clearly.

“Cantharidin, highly concentrated and mostly absorbed through uterine tissue.”

“Do you think they'll allow a remake of _The Fly_ , but with a Spanish fly, and guest-starring us?” Mulder quipped, glancing up at Scully with a grin. Scully raised her eyebrows, a ghost of a smile at the corners of her mouth, but she refused to show it.

“No. As Clar— _Starling's_ associates told me last night, the Spanish fly is more beetle than fly. No movie deal, Mulder.”

His eyebrows raised in turn at her stuttering over Clarice's name, which earned him a quality Scully glare. For the sake of the dignity of all women present, he held back a wider grin. Still, Clarice seemed to sense the grin in him and quietly moved from his side to stand at Scully's instead. Only Scully could see Mulder's expression brighten, or at least understood what it meant from him. Excitement. Theories rumbling in his big dumb head. She was going to get an earful.

“We don't have any evidence linking Lytta or anyone definitive towards this case, and Lytta has yet to give us the evidence against Lipstick Tomcat. It may very well reveal the opposite of what we think,” Scully reminded him, gesturing to the window where Lytta was finishing up. Beside her, Clarice shifted, a little uncomfortable.

“Come on, Scully, at least admit he fits the profile better than good ol' Lipstick Tomcat. Back me up, Starling, don't you agree?”

Scully glanced to the side as Clarice nodded her chin, her jaw clenching a little, “Her apartment didn't show any signs of deviant behavior. It was messy but comfortable.”

Mulder closed the file and tapped it against the flat of his hand, “Judging by the classifieds she circled in the newspapers, she wants to adopt a cat soon and that's it. Two against one, it was Mr. Green, in the bedroom, with—,”

On cue, Detective Lytta, his tie just as emerald as it was yesterday, left the interrogation room, greeting the agents with a nod of his head. The two women turned their heads. Mulder, unable to completely hide his feelings, stared hard at the shorter detective, particularly as he only gave Mulder small regard and put all of his focus towards his female partners.

“He's all yours to interrogate, I left files and evidence of his activities on the nights of the murders for you in the room.”

“ _She_ ,” Clarice hissed under her breath, but Lytta didn't seem to hear nor care.

“Quite a wacko if you ask me, have you ladies ever encountered something like this before, working the force?”

All three FBI agents bristled, though none so much as Clarice. Scully, having dealt with shit like this time and time before, held a cold stare with Detective Lytta. Her voice was even and steely, and as she spoke Mulder narrowed his eyes at the detective, silently giving Scully support.

“Detective Lytta, the very nature of the work Agent Mulder and I do encompass these kinds of cases and far, far worse.” Yes, she was sure Lytta didn't want her to recount the Flukeman. Or Tooms. Or anything else on their list.

Lytta laughed, though there was no humor behind it, making it hollow and adversive. He turned to Clarice, then, giving note that Scully had not included her as a partner. His eyes gleamed a little _too_ warmly, and Scully saw the shoulders of her borrowed blazer raise in fast succession with Clarice's breaths.

“I suppose I don't have to ask _you_ that, Miss Clarice Starling,”

“ _Agent_ ,” Scully interrupted to correct. Lytta ignored her.

“You certainly have encountered wackos like that one in there, huh? What's with the animal names anyways, Buffalo Bill, Lipstick Tomcat, surely there's a connection there!”

The corner's of Clarice's eyes stung. Scully's red hair flashed in the dim light as she turned to study her expression, make sure she was okay. Mulder's gaze flickered between the two women, then back to Lytta, watching his hands. They were, currently, in his pockets, but they were moving as he spoke to Clarice.

“Shame you had to kill Buffalo Bill, though, you could've interviewed him and we would've found the killer sooner with your help, eh? Maybe with two pretty ladies they'd open up faster!”

He tried to ride it off like a joke, a dark one, but no one was laughing. Still he chose to ignore this, making up for the lack of laughter himself with the same hollow noise. One hand left his pocket and Mulder's chin jerked, watching as he led it to pat Scully on the back of the neck. Using his long limbs, Mulder drove his tall body in between Clarice and Scully, shouldering Scully off and blocking Lytta's hand from touching her while she was focused on Clarice.

“I think we can handle the interrogation from here, thanks, Detective,” Mulder interrupted in a calm but angry tone, “In fact you've given us a lot of information, so this should be fairly easy.”

Mulder's stare did not leave Lytta, nor did he move until the detective took the hint and uneasily left the room. Still he stared at the door.

“Not only do his officers say he's a grouch of a person, but any man who digs around in his pockets and pulls his hand out covered in goo should be arrested for public indecency.”

“Mulder...?” Scully questioned, combing her fingers through the hair on the back of her head, suddenly realizing what he had intercepted.

“Scully, how soon can you get a DNA test from Lytta and Tomcat and compare the two to the beetle egg semen sample we found at Cynthia Velasquez's crime scene?”

“As soon as possible, I can go make the call after we interrogate her.”

Mulder nodded and moved to open the door when Clarice spoke up, “I want to interrogate her.”

Both agents paused and looked at her. She took in a breath and repeated herself, “No, I want to interrogate her. First, alone.”

Mulder and Scully looked at each other. Clarice watched them communicate wordlessly, her lips tight as she tossed a lock of hair back and raised her chin to assert herself.

“I have experience with this. I want to do it.”

Yeah. Okay. Mulder and Scully parted from the door, allowing her to enter alone. Mulder passed her the file in his hand as she did so. The door shut behind her and they turned to the window to watch and listen.

“So...,” Mulder started after a while. Scully tightened her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest. The look in her eyes was familiar, she was intensely focused on the interrogation as well as Mulder's words. Guarded, mechanical, dissecting everything she was taking in as it came to her. Mulder's words would be sent before her personal jury, and he was very much so treading on thin ice.

“ _Clarice_...,” he asked, unable to hide his smile.

“She didn't want to stay in her apartment. There were cameras and paparazzi, so we studied the case at my place until she passed out on the couch.”

He looked at her, the grin spreading to the twinkle in his eyes. She wasn't telling the whole truth, and he _knew_ it.

“Get lots of studying done?”

“Mulder I swear—,”

“Well, if it takes a walking aphrodisiac to actually make you fall for a man I should've figured it out sooner,”

“ _Mulder—,_ ”

“Hey, no harm no foul, Scully, it's your business.”

“Damn right it is,” she snapped, shooting him a glare, “What's your interest, anyways?”

He cocked a smirk and quietly laughed to himself, watching Clarice talk to Lipstick Tomcat, “Did she buzz like a bee or march like an ant?”

Her jaw dropped as her glare turned incredulous. Why she was still surprised at him, she would never know. If, perhaps, a time machine dropped in front of her and she traveled years into the future, he would still be able to surprise her with his stubbornness, his audacity. God, the one thing she didn't want to do right now was talk to him, but oh, she was _stuck_ with him for better or for worse. With a scoff that was certainly meant to be heard clearly, she turned back to watching the back of Clarice's head.

“Neither, Mulder, shockingly she doesn't portray any arthropod traits whatsoever. Any other questions you want out in the open?”

“Is she a succubus?”

“I don't want to dignify you with an answer.”

“I didn't hear a no from that. She is, then, isn't she?”

Another glare. Mulder raised his shoulders in a shrug.

“She's got _you_ , hasn't she?”

Throttle. Throttle him. End this. Go home and pretend this never happened. Do it, Scully.

Yet she couldn't react in time to hide the twitch of a smile. _She's got you, hasn't she?_ Scully pretended not to see Mulder's smirk deepen with knowledge upon seeing her insignificant smile. Oh yes. Clarice had Scully, and Scully had Clarice.

Mulder relented into silence for the rest of the interrogation.

 

~~

 

“ _Start with the basics, I guess. Your pseudonym is Lipstick Tomcat, what is your birth name?”_

“ _Dylan Peter Bruce. All I ever wanted was to change my last name to something that wasn't a first name.”_

“ _I assume that's not reason enough for murder, Mr. Bruce.”_

“ _P...Please, Agent Starling, if you could—,”_

“ _Ms. Tomcat.”_

“ _Thanks...I mean maybe I shouldn't bring my drag name into this. It just makes things more...comfortable. Like they're not happening directly to me. Do you know what I mean?”_

“ _I do.”_

“ _Yeah. You look like you do.”_

“ _Detective Lytta has your locations listed here the night of the murders, confessions that you were seen talking with many of the victims before their time of deaths.”_

“ _Yeah. That's what I do after shows. Talk with everyone. Catch up. Make sure they're doing alright.”_

“ _Could you tell me why you do that?”_

“ _Because they need it. If they got a pimp he sure as hell ain't doing that. Y'know? Tomcat scratches their back, and in turn they scratch Tomcat's.”_

“ _What do you mean by that?”_

“ _Well...uh. Street stuff. Um.”_

“ _History of drugs here; marijuana, cocaine, heroin—,”_

“ _Well...,”_

“ _This interrogation is not about drug use, Ms. Tomcat.”_

“ _Still intimidating, you with your sharp blazer like that. Your shoulders could poke eyes out. Is that why you wear them?”_

“ _Off-topic, Ms. Tomcat.”_

“ _You're too professional.”_

“ _I've done this before.”_

“ _Right.”_

“ _How close were you to these girls?”_

“ _I dunno. I talked with them and that's about it.”_

“ _You made it sound like you were closer. Do you need me to read off their names?”_

“ _N-No, that's—,”_

“ _Cynthia Velasquez. That was the recent one. Maria Shepherd. Jodie Mason. Tina Townshend. Laura—,”_

“ _Stop! Please! Stop!”_

“ _Why, Ms. Tomcat? Were you close to them?”_

“ _Please, I've seen the pictures, I've answered your questions, I just want to go home, I didn't do anything to them!”_

“ _Are you telling the truth, Ms. Tomcat?”_

“ _I don't have a reason to lie...,”_

“ _Do you know who did do it?”_

“ _I don't know...,”_

“ _Ms. Tomcat, can you identify the faces of their potential customers, any regulars, or someone who happens by the neighborhood frequently?”_

“ _S-Sure. Sure. I can do that. Can't really name names, though, because I hardly know any real legal ones. What's the point in that anyways when you give yourself a name like Dildo Swinton?”_

 

~~

 

Clarice left the interrogation room, a picture of Detective Lytta in her hands. It was one of three that Lipstick Tomcat had picked out from a lineup of regular or frequent customers she had seen in the area in recent weeks. Scully had called in for DNA testing as immediately as possible. Hunger made Mulder's stomach rumble, and as Scully wrapped up the call he began to usher the three of them out the door for dinner. Results would come back soon enough and if Lytta had any head about him he wouldn't be able to find a place to hide—so long as the fact that they were gathering evidence against them remained a relative secret. That didn't matter on an empty stomach, though, and Mulder was the first out from the detention center, Scully following just behind him. Clarice hung back, Lipstick Tomcat's interrogation swimming through her mind. How different she was from Buffalo Bill, how comfortable and harmless her demeanor continued to be, even when under pressure.

A flash of green passed in front of her eyes and Clarice started, stopping in her tracks just before she ran into Detective Lytta. He reached out a hand to steady her, grabbing her upper arms. Her heart beat fast, and she backed up a few steps, smiling awkwardly. Lecter had been behind a cage, Buffalo Bill had kept his distance. Lytta was uncomfortably close and seemed to only want to get closer.

“Careful there, don't let the work get to your pretty little head,” Detective Lytta warned with a pale smile, “But I suppose if I took over the work they wouldn't let me be on the news, would they? If you finish the case, do you think I have a chance?”

“With all due respect, Detective Lytta, it's not all its cracked up to be,” Clarice tried to make her voice as steely as Scully's, but something had struck a nerve and it wasn't coming to her as naturally as it should've.

“I suppose it isn't, you must be right. Well, no wonder you're working with the agents who run the X-Files. Word about them gets around even to us lowkey types.”

Clarice nodded dumbly. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. _Please let me go, I'm...hungry. For dinner. That I have to go to. Away from here._

“Well, I won't keep you waiting if you're gonna go solve this case for me,” Lytta held out a cordial hand, “Show me what you've got in the morning?”

Giving a half-hearted smirk, Clarice shook his hand. It was clammy. Sweaty? It seemed thicker than sweat. In a split-second her eyes widened, thinking of Mulder's observation, and she yanked her hand back, maneuvering around Lytta and trying to ignore that he was watching her leave the building. Hunching her head so her face hid behind her auburn hair, Clarice walked as fast as possible without sprinting.

“Starling,” Scully said as she approached the car. A different question was on her lips, on what restaurant she wanted to go to in order to shut Mulder up about settling on a local tacqueria for the fourth time that week, but upon seeing the wide stare in her eyes, her voice immediately lowered in concern.

“Starling? Are you okay?”

Clarice shook her head, more deflecting the question than anything. Scully dipped her head down to try and meet her eyes.

“Clarice?”

“It's...nothing,” Clarice said with a shaky breath. Scully furrowed her brow in worry, perhaps she shouldn't have done the interrogation alone, perhaps, like with the entomologists, she wasn't as ready as she thought she was to interrogate someone again. Still, Scully would drop it for now until their bellies were all full. She opened the door to sit in the passenger seat.

“Agent Scully?” _For God's sake just call me Scully,_ “You said you had found something interesting on the case last night, what was it?”

“Nothing, really,” Scully confessed, glad that Clarice was at least talking, “Just a funny coincidence.”

“What was it?” Clarice asked again as she sat herself in the backseat of the car.

“The genus name for the Spanish fly, it was on the sheet the entomologists gave us. It's Lytta.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: mentions of rape, rape vibes, drugs/coercion, mild nsfw content (arousal, masturbation mentions, a terrible fish taco joke)

“Mulder don't you dare turn right here.” Scully warned, leaning forward in the passenger seat. Mulder was uncharacteristically quiet, which only seemed to put Scully further on edge.

“ _Mulder...,_ ”

Her warning was followed up by an _extremely_ disappointed sigh, defeated as she threw her head back against the headrest. Juanita's Tacqueria. _Again_.

“Taco Tuesday,” Mulder muttered with a small pout trying to cover his smile, his shoulders hunching a little as she turned her icy glare on him.

“It's _Thursday_ ,” Scully corrected, admonishing him, “You're unbelievable.”

“I'm a bachelor,”

“Un. Believable.” she reiterated.

“S'not like _you've_ been eating authentic tacos for five days this week, that's all on me,” Mulder protested, “Hey, Starling, have you been to Juanita's?”

“Mmm,” she responded quietly, “No...,”

Scully blinked. Chancing a glance back at the girl, she found her uncomfortably tight and curled, her fingers firmly locked together. Her knuckles were whitening but she didn't seem to care, staring into the back of Scully's seat. Mulder looked over at Scully, catching on that something wasn't right. Opening his mouth to speak, he hoped that it would warm the situation a little more.

“It's this little _tacqueria_ run by this boss of an old woman Juanita and they're the best damn tacos you'll find around here. Order around ten at a time and you'll be set for the evening, are you up for it?”

Clarice didn't respond, prompting Scully to look back again. At Scully's stare she finally agreed, though it was monotone and fairly unconvincing. Furrowing her brow in worry, Scully lowered her voice to make it seem as personal to Clarice as possible despite the fact that Mulder was with them and very much within earshot.

“Clarice? Is something wrong?

Clarice glanced up at Scully, and Scully felt strange. Her eyes were darker than usual, but in the dimming light it was hard to determine why that was. The girl refused to answer, though, shifting in her seat uneasily and Scully gave a wary glance at Mulder. Mulder couldn't offer up any explanations of her behavior with Clarice still within earshot. But even then, the look he gave Scully told her that he was certain she'd know her better than he would even with all his profiling. Still, he was trying his best.

“Hey Starling, don't sweat it, dinner's on me tonight, since Scully is so distraught that I want tacos again.”

Scully's mouth twitched in a small smirk, but the concern remained on her face as she turned back to the front. Mulder then gave _her_ the questioning look, asking if she herself was okay with Clarice not being okay. She pretended to ignore it, staring out the window as the city lights slowly woke up with the setting sun.

“ _Dios m_ _í_ _o_ ,” A short, stocky old Mexican woman with silvery hair tied in a tight bun breathed as Mulder's tall frame took up the doorway of the restaurant, “Señor Mulder, and friends.”

Mulder was grinning, greeting Juanita enthusiastically. Juanita craned her neck around Mulder's shoulders to nod at Scully, whom she had seen been dragged along before. Clarice, though, was new, and Juanita wouldn't answer Mulder until he properly introduced her. Clarice said little, smiling small and offering a limp hand to shake. Juanita puffed a cloud of air in disapproval at her handshake, and instructed her grandnephew Eugenio to seat them. Clarice seemed too distant to be offended. Scully kept eying her.

She was avoiding eye contact and though her fingers were no longer locked together she neurotically kneaded the fabric of the coat Scully had lent her. Cautious and wary, Scully kept Clarice between herself and Mulder for the short distance to the table. Perhaps it was just that the interrogation with Lipstick Tomcat had shook her more than she was bargaining for, much like the entomologists had. But she had seemed perfectly fine immediately afterwards; this seemed too...sudden. But then...things seemed to happen suddenly to Clarice Starling, didn't they? It's not like she climbed the ladder to where she was, more like someone had yanked her up to her status without her permission. One day she was a trainee, the next she was sitting in front of Hannibal Lecter, the next Buffalo Bill was dead, and her face was on every TV screen, every newspaper, and especially every tabloid. Scully glanced at the back of Mulder's head and wondered what he'd complacently say. Maybe she was just too hungry to function and some food would do her good.

Mulder had taken over, ordering several tacos to be shared by everyone. Juanita's old leathery hands worked efficiently and deftly, each taco hand-crafted just for them. With the first bite Mulder voiced his thanks to her, speaking Spanish that made Juanita's eyebrow raise, impressed with how fluent Mulder _wasn't_. But he was smiling, knowing how terrible he sounded despite his numerous visits to this place, despite being an FBI agent with only one language under his belt, and though her face was just as leathery as her hardworking hands there were hints of mirth hidden in her genuine features.

“ _Kweh delicious-oh_ shouldn't be in anyone's vocabulary, but at least she likes you well enough to let that slide, Mulder,” Scully commented as she tucked more cilantro into her chicken taco. She had half a mind to believe that he ruined the phrase on purpose, but then again she couldn't be completely sure. Mulder couldn't respond past the food in his mouth, and Scully smirked, “Do you think she's figured out the crush you have on her yet?”

Mulder snorted, sour cream nearly coming out of his nose. Scully laughed into her shoulder. No matter how much Scully protested against Juanita's since he had been eating here for almost a week straight, at least he was eating something a little more wholesome than stale takeout. _It's either this or cold spam, Scully,_ she heard him argue in her head. Seriously, though the suggestion of a crush was a joke she had half a mind to say that if Mulder had married this woman she'd come over for dinner at least as many times as he was coming to her restaurant.

Mulder coughed, regaining himself and wiping his upper lip to ensure no sour cream had actually escaped through his nose. He looked like he was going to retort something, but instead he opted to continue eating with only a wry glance in her direction and a bounce of his eyebrows. If this wasn't how Mulder showed his love for something (that is to say, he would willingly and satisfactorally shut up for just a moment) she didn't know what was. A way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and all that; keep him eating and you've got him hook, line, and sinker.

A way to a woman's heart, however...

Scully glanced up at Clarice, sitting across from them. There was a wavering smile on her lips, but it was trembling as though she wasn't sure if it should be there or not. Her shoulders, squared by the jacket, moved with her quickened breaths. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and her eyes were staring blankly at the paper table decorations, barely taking in what was happening around her.

Scully swallowed her laughter down her throat. She glanced down at the platters of tacos in front of them. Clarice had barely touched them, and as Mulder wolfed down the rest of his taco Scully tried to meet her eye.

“Clarice, maybe we should take you home, you don't look so well.”

“I'm...ah, _fine_ ,” Clarice panted out as her tongue darted along her lips. Scully leaned forward, trying to glean sense from Clarice's condition from afar. She nervously tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear, avoiding Scully as much as possible, “I'm just...um. Fl-Flustered.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have interrogated Lipstick Tomcat alone.”

“N-No, that um...,” Clarice gave a quick glance at Scully and she could finally see that her eyes were incredibly dilated, hence the darkness she thought she saw in them in the car. Clarice's ears turned red to match her flushed cheeks, “That's not what it is.”

Scully raised an eyebrow, but she wasn't relaxed even if Clarice seemed to know what was going on. Mulder, trying to keep himself quiet (for whatever reason; usually he wouldn't be, and that only made Scully more on edge), kept eating as the two women spoke quietly.

“L-Listen I...I have to go. I'll...call you.”

Awkward and breathy, Clarice clambered up and away from the table, barely excusing herself as she left. Mulder watched her go, catching a stray cilantro leaf off of his chin with his tongue and he swallowed.

“Guess these aren't the right tacos she was looking for,” Mulder teased quietly, “Hope she isn't allergic to sea—,”

“Mulder...,” Scully interrupted him before she was forced to hear his terrible joke. Still, her voice sounded more crestfallen than she meant it to. Mulder's knee gently nudged hers and she looked over at her partner.

“Your medical opinion, doctor?” Mulder suggested, “Because mine wouldn't be considered medical. Well-researched, maybe, but not medical.”

Scully twisted her mouth and looked down at the half-eaten food in her hands. She was hesitant to speak, somehow feeling awkward, somehow feeling like it was Clarice's damn business that she had to take care of and Scully shouldn't shove her nose into it. Neither should Mulder, but here they both were, perplexed and juggling theories as to why Clarice's demeanor changed so suddenly, why she left at the drop of a hat.

An unknown pang struck Scully, a fleeting panicking thought of _what if Clarice was always sudden, always out of nowhere? I don't think I could live with that_. Where it had come from, Scully sought to silence immediately, and she didn't dare try to think of it again.

“I didn't get a close enough look so I can't say for sure...,” Scully desperately tried to ignore Mulder's glittering eyes at that statement, “But she seemed rather...aroused.”

“Shucks,” Mulder commented, “Gee.”

Scully was quiet, staring off past the food in her hand as Mulder sank his head to try and get into her vision. Out of her peripherals she could see the impish gleam remain in his eyes as he bounced his eyebrows again. Scully couldn't give him the satisfaction of looking at him.

“Mulder it doesn't make sense,” Scully muttered, deep in thought, “Certainly arousal can happen at any time and there are some conditions in which it can happen spontaneously enough it presents a problem in day-to-day life but...,”

Mulder raised his eyebrows, sincerely listening to Scully despite being unable to wipe the smirk off his face, “But you spent enough time with her to deduce that she probably doesn't have one of those conditions.”

Scully blinked and shook her head, not to deny Mulder's assumption but simply in confusion. Mulder stuffed one of the last tacos into his cheeks, brushing his hands off over the platter. She watched his hands rub together and as the gears turned in her head she finally looked at him.

“Mulder, back at the detention center, you stepped forward when Detective Lytta was speaking. You said there was something on his hands.”

Mulder nodded, slowly, catching on to Scully's thought process as she said it out loud, “It was a shimmery, goopy kind of substance. Not what we found at the crime scene, but...,”

“Mulder...,”

“I'm not sure what it was, but he intended to touch you with that hand specifically. If we're close to catching him, then it could've been a last ditch effort to save his hide. Or exoskeleton, if you will.”

“Poison...?” Scully breathed. Mulder pursed his lips, pushing his lower lip out as he rattled his brain in thought.

“Maybe more like an aphrodisiac, cantharidin, hell maybe even a mix of hexing herbs to bewitch a woman into—well.”

“Cantharidin doesn't work that way, Mulder,” Scully argued, but her face was sullen and pale, believing what Mulder was saying more than she wanted to admit, “And God help us if there's such a thing as an aphrodisiac gel that can inhibit someone's judgment far enough into willingly sleeping with someone. Remember, those women weren't raped, that we know of.”

“Maybe cantharidin that we know of doesn't work that way,” Mulder shifted, turning towards her as he was wont to do when he was hot on a theory, “We found traces of it in Cynthia Velasquez's body but we also found the pills on her end table, what if instead of a cover-up the substance that we're looking for, a powerful aphrodisiac, isn't recognized by our technology or we just haven't run all the right tests to find it yet? What if Lytta didn't really have to do anything at all except clean the crime scene of the semen samples he left behind?”

“I want to pretend that for once you'd like to look at evidence instead of imagination,” Scully retorted, her voice thin. Mulder finally took note of this.

“You want to pretend, but you _can't_ , because Lytta failed in getting that substance on you. Agent Starling was the last one out of the building, wasn't she?”

“Yes,” Scully confirmed.

“Did you see who she was last talking to?”

Scully stared at him.

The chairs were empty, leftover tacos on the platter next to several crumpled bills overpaying the charge becoming the only indication that anyone had been there before Juanita could open her mouth and chastise them for their unceremonious departure.

 

~~

 

Clarice's legs wobbled as she stumbled down the street. She felt drunk, hazy. But at the same time she knew she couldn't be—she had barely drank water at the restaurant and there was no chance of alcohol in her system. She could've been drugged, but she also struck that from the list, due to the incredibly noticeable pounding in between her legs, making her abdomen throb and her thighs quiver with each step.

It had started the moment she left the detention center and saw Scully waiting for her near the car. Initially she had told herself it was just the small shock, the rush of seeing Scully there after curling up into her soft neck and firm arms. It had been an intimate gesture that the older agent hadn't pushed away, and Clarice found that she was far more grateful for that than she knew. But the arousal hadn't gone away, only increasing in intensity as Mulder drove to the tacqueria. Food, food and water should've neutralized it, but she found she could barely eat or drink, and when she did she lost concentration on keeping her arousal in check.

And when Scully spoke to her...spoke her _name_ in such soft genuine concern...

So, so different than a cannibal hissing her name through his lips, looking at her with hungry eyes, his tongue passing over his teeth as if he was imagining how her marble flesh would taste in his mouth. It had only served to deepen the knot in her gut, and she could only feel herself burn up with the pounding of her pulse.

Well.

Okay.

It had gone straight to her groin. No matter how poetic she tried to make it sound. And that had fucking scared her, because she couldn't stop it. She couldn't stand sitting there anymore, watching Scully's small table mannerisms, watching her elbow Mulder when he made a bad quip even though she had smirked wryly at it, the freckles on her smooth nose, the way her eyes were no longer steel and ice but now warm seas and gentle mints.

Back to the poetry. Clarice stumbled and leaned up against a building, breathing heavier and heavier. Much as it would seem barbaric and heinous she was getting the strong idea to just duck into a dark alleyway and fucking finish herself off so she could at least rid herself of some of this self-induced intoxication. Even just a little bit, even if she had to actually top it off later, Clarice was becoming desperate as the arousal wouldn't dim.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She had had enough things written about her in the papers, if god forbid someone saw her...called the cops on her...took pictures of her getting herself off in a fucking alleyway...

Biting her lip, Clarice kept walking (stumbling) down the sidewalk in the vague direction of her neighborhood. She would've wanted to take a cab but she wasn't sure how that would end up, if she could even get the words out. (and what if she just dropped her pants and fucked herself right in the backseat? No, no no no, too risky, she didn't trust herself.) Fantasize, then. Fantasies never hurt anyone if they stayed in the head. God knows that Clarice knew the consequences of making fantasy reality. So as she stumbled home she began to fantasize, hoping the fantasies would help quell the neediness between her legs until she was sure to get some privacy at least. Letting her mind wander, Clarice pressed her shoulders to the walls of the buildings she was passing.

It wandered to red hair. Freckles on a smooth nose. Wondering what her laugh, her _genuine_ laugh sounded like. She had laughed in the restaurant but Clarice was trying too hard to focus on fighting the arousal she had missed it. Her lips were so plush, plump, even. Round. Closed off, and Clarice was desperate to see them be inviting, because she knew they could be. If she had wanted them to be, if she trusted someone enough to let them be. Was her partner someone she trusted enough to show that to?

_No, Clarice, don't interrupt your fantasy, because strangely enough, something's telling you your life is depending on it..._

“Agent Starling? Agent Starling?”

_Please let it be her_.

Clarice stumbled to a stop, gasping for air despite her flushed and sweaty skin, and she turned her head over her shoulder.

No.

Not her.

Not her partner, either.

But a simple, ordinary man, holding a simple, ordinary camera. Clarice's eyes widened.

There was a flash, a shutter click, and Clarice shrieked like she had been attacked. She had wanted to run but her legs betrayed her and she stumbled instead, nearly crashing onto the concrete sidewalk. From one camera would come a pack, and if she didn't hurry and pick herself up she'd be lost in a horde of flashes before too long.

One step. Two. Five steps, and she could still hear the cameraman behind her and the feeling of more showing up was becoming worse and worse, until a man stopped her by the elbow, smiling down at her while frowning harshly at the cameras. Still trying to gain her balance, Clarice pulled locks of her auburn hair away to try and see who was attempting to rescue her.

Flashes of green.

Detective Lytta.

Something cold, cold in comparison to all the heat in her body, formed in her stomach but Clarice had to force herself to remain calm. She was a Federal Agent. Lytta had to be extremely stupid if he was going to try anything. As well, he may have been the prime suspect in Mulder's case (maybe even Scully's too) but there was no hard evidence against Lytta. Arresting Lipstick Tomcat against Mulder's stakeout might have rubbed her the wrong way, especially after interrogating her, but maybe Lytta thought he was doing the right thing, bigoted or not. Did Clarice have any better leads than Mulder? No, but right now Lytta was the closest thing she had to kicking the paparazzi off and getting home. Clarice heard herself breathe thanks as Lytta waved the cameras away, pulling his dark green coat off his shoulders and tenting it over Clarice's head as a sort of barrier. He began to lead her down the streets, coat shielding her. Finally. Finally, good, she was going to be able to get home and rid herself of all of this, and once that was done, a freezing cold shower, as cold as Scully's eyes could get when she was absolutely livid.

Clarice let herself dip into the fantasy again to calm herself down. Lytta was being quiet, not asking questions, and that only served to help Clarice dive deeper into the fantasy.

As the thought of Scully's fiery hair blending with her own darker auburn tickled her mind (and her lower belly) the thought vaguely occurred to her that Clarice hadn't told Lytta where she lived. He probably had seen it on her badge, or something, or from police records.

But really, she hadn't told him where she lived. And the coat was protecting her sure, but she soon realized that she couldn't see anything but the concrete beneath her feet. The fantasy slowly fell away, and Clarice began to realize that it had lowered her guard around Lytta. She shifted her shoulders, straightening them so she could glance up at the buildings and the street signs.

King Street. That's what Lipstick Tomcat had called Cynthia Velasquez. Lynch Street. That was the nickname for a girl by the name of Laura.

Clarice's feet stumbled like staccato notes from a piano. She was in the red light districts. She was in the districts of the Red Light murders.

“You live around here, D-Detective Lytta?” Clarice panted, noticing that her arousal _still_ hadn't diminished. Lytta gave a squeeze of her hand which shot hot warmth like spicy whiskey down the nerves of her fingers to her spinal cord. Warmth like arousal. Arousal she hadn't wanted. Scully's fiery hair streaked in her mind and Clarice squeezed her eyes shut in pain.

“Detective Lytta...,” she tried to distract, “I have to go to the bathroom,”

“We'll be home soon enough,” Lytta supplied. Clarice's head swam, trying to figure out whose home he meant. Frantically she tried to think of ways to talk her way out of this as her feet kept refusing to obey her from the sheer force of the unwanted arousal.

“Okay,” she accepted, trying to lure him into a false sense of security as if she didn't know what he was doing. Her mind raced, thinking of her training, thinking of ways to get out of this, thinking of Scully. A grim, ironic thought crossed her mind; if she had prompted Mulder to talk more about his theory, to learn about what he thought was going on, would she have any information she would need to get out of this? Incubus, right? They fed off of sex like some sort of food?

Well, this was the red light district, wasn't it? Clarice swung her dilated eyes until they fell upon a buzzing XXX shop.

“Wait, Detective Lytta,” she slurred, trying to sway hard and made her voice heavier than it should've been, “Can we...y'know...stop there first?”

Lytta paused, looked at her and her hooded eyelids, then looked at the shop. A smile creased his terse features and he led her across the street to the shop. Sounds of rough pornography played on high quality speakers from within, and Clarice tried to block out the moaning women. Half of them were faking it, the other half probably just wanted their paycheck, but _still_ it was moaning on a resonance that her groin agreed too much with. Clarice let Lytta open the door for her and she shuffled inside the shop, watching as he did the same. Immediately his eyes were transfixed to some of the TV screens displaying the latest releases in the high taste world of pornography. Clarice watched him, noticing drool pooling at the corners of his mouth like a dog waiting for his food to be served. She pressed her back against the door to the shop.

Then she ran.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: continued mentions of rape and drugged coercion
> 
> corrected some cringey "go ahead spell out that accent" dialogue lord help me it's still not great ffffffuck
> 
> otherwise i remember having a lot of fun with these chapters i am so sorry

Mulder was in the driver's seat as Scully called the police department, starting a search for Agent Starling and pressing questions into Lytta's whereabouts. Several minutes of correspondence only served to harden Scully's voice, pitching it in worry. Mulder's eyes darted along the dark streets, only paying the minimum amount of attention needed to the road. It had almost served them to be in an accident more than once or twice, saved only by Mulder's foot slamming on the brake, shooting Scully forward until the seat belt locked, her hand on the dashboard. Normally she'd give Mulder a sour look for his recklessness, but it was the least of her concerns now.

“His apartment phone is going to voicemail, and no one knows where he frequents after-hours,” Scully relayed to him, “Mulder, take a left here, right at the next stoplight.”

She had almost said the directions too late, and the tires on his car screeched as he yanked the wheel to do as she told. Scully gripped the dashboard, her eyes focused ahead.

“It's a long shot, but keep an eye out for anyone with a camera as we go down this block,”

“What are you looking for?” Mulder asked, his voice tense and low as his hands gripped the steering wheel.

“Paparazzi,” Scully replied. Seconds later she called for Mulder to park, which he haphazardly obliged. Both agents exited the car, Scully barely noticing that her fingers had curved to angry claws, her nails scraping along the metal as she slammed the door shut. A small group of people mingled in front of an apartment building, two of them sharing a smoke, others simply loitering and checking their cameras. They didn't seem too alert, figuring that whoever they'd be looking for either wasn't going to come (as she hadn't the previous night) or was going to be exceptionally late. With Mulder matching her stride, Scully marched up to the group, badge in hand.

“You're standing outside the apartment building of Special Agent Clarice Starling,” Scully began, her intense voice immediately demanding attention. Some of their eyes widened and they looked to each other, frantically trying to pull up a spokesperson for them.

“Y-Yes well...We have a right to be here,”

“To an extent,” Scully interrupted, “But that's neither here nor there. Which one of you has seen Clarice Starling recently?”

The paparazzi outside her house looked at each other nervously. Scully marching up to them so suddenly with Mulder's wide shoulders looming and closing them in had caught them completely off-guard. But even with the element of shock, some puffed out their cheeks and tried to argue with her.

“Listen, we're not under arrest, are we? We _do_ have a right to be here and Miss Starling—,”

“ _Agent_ Starling,” Mulder corrected, but his comment went unnoticed.

“—hasn't filed any specific restraining order against us.”

As several other of the photographers started piping up in support Scully ground her teeth. Mulder glanced down to see her fingers flex, her skin white with anger. The paparazzi wasn't going to last long against her.

“ _Everybody_ ,” Scully shouted, _commanded_ over the growing protests, “If anyone has any news as to the _extremely recent_ whereabouts of Agent Clarice Starling, step forward _now_ , or I'll be forced to actually think of a law to get you _all_ incarcerated!”

“If she can't think of one, I'll think of one for her,” Mulder chimed in as the voices began to die down, “That, however, shouldn't be necessary if we have your cooperation. Who here has seen Agent Clarice Starling in the last two hours?”

Several of the photographers stepped back, lowering their heads or looking away. Scully's sneer increased as she looked from photographer to photographer. As she had said, it had been a long shot, and as it became clear that none of them had seen her she grew more and more impatient with the wasted time.

“Damn it,” she hissed. If she found out any of them were lying to her, there was no doubt that she'd hunt and drag them down by the soft flesh of their neck. Turning on her heel, she left the photographers awkwardly disbanding and leaving the front of Clarice's apartment building. Mulder followed her, jogging to catch up with her haste.

“Scully,” he tried to say softly, “She's out there, okay?”

“She's on the front page of every tabloid and no one, not even the _paparazzi_ has seen her.” Scully growled, biting down on the insides of her lips.

“She's an agent, she knows how to hide if she needs it,” Mulder tried to comfort.

“She said she'd call...,” Scully muttered distantly, her hand going to the pocket where her cell phone was. Mulder touched her elbow.

“Maybe she will, you never know.”

Scully bit her lip harder, “God I'm going to feel so stupid if it turns out she just...went out for a bit.”

“In that condition?” Mulder shook his head, “No, you and I know there's more to it,”

“You think so,” Scully said, “But I'm not so sure.” It was still hard to wrap her head around. Cantharidin. The possible presence of a strong aphrodisiac they had yet to determine. Lab results on the semen or egg sac or whatever sample they had picked up would be arriving tomorrow, but who's to say what kind of composition it would hold. Spanish fly, the deaths of the women with no signs of violence, Detective Lytta, Mulder's theory about the incubus, Mulder's _amended_ theory about the incubus being related to an insect. What little hard facts they had pointed to some sort of foul play, enough to pull a case together, but it was all too confusing. Lytta fit the profile, so Lytta she had to focus on. If he was the one, if he had found a way to induce arousal by means of some sort of gel, what in god's name had possessed him to go after a federal agent? An extremely famous one, too?

Mulder held his hand against the car door, preventing her from swinging it open. She stared up at him, about to explode in his calm face for obstructing their investigation, wasting precious time. He shook his head a little.

“Hold on, Scully. We need to go over the facts.”

“Mulder how is that going to help right now when we possibly have a missing agent?”

“I don't know, I don't know Scully but maybe we could piece something together. Maybe the killer will strike again tonight.”

“Not Clari—Not Starling, that'd be too risky.” Scully shot down, but Mulder was undeterred.

“Call her Clarice in front of me, I don't care, Scully, but even if you think it'd be too risky to attack her, maybe he doesn't care. The basics are that we have an incubus running around feeding off of sex with women and this incubus is displaying insect traits—egg sacs from the same genus as the Spanish fly were discovered at the crime scene, the possibility of using pheromones to communicate or change another person's behavior. He'd use these pheromones to help get his sustenance. An incubus like him would use sex as his food source, his source of energy. There's a sort of primal drive to it as strong to us as seeing a hamburger in the subliminal messaging right before we see Anthony Hopkins on the big screen.”

“Mulder, this isn't going to help her,” Scully's voice was desperate now, choking almost. Yes, she could see the angle Mulder was trying to get at, but they should all be _together_ for this; this sort of analyzation should happen after the danger was over. But her partner was insistent, and she held in a breath to try and calm herself down as much as possible just to tolerate him.

“Alright, let me give you the straight profile then: Hanging around red light districts must be a buffet to him, but it's also a convenient place for crimes since less people report crimes in that area—and people get less uppity if they hear two people doing the naked pretzel. The latest ones have been close to industrial areas as well—abandoned places, alleyways, ways to get some privacy.” Mulder continued.

“If Lytta picked her up, why bring her there where we would find her?”

“Familiarity, territory, why does a leopard drag an antelope into a tree?” Mulder took in a breath to gather his thoughts for Scully, “Even if Lytta isn't our perpetrator, whoever it is, the red lights would be closer to their home. Call local police again to have them fan out this area, question any photographers or paparazzi.”

“Given her condition, Mulder, there's no way she could've gotten all the way down there by herself; she could've just been attacked or picked up by someone else completely unrelated to the case. Or called a cab, or any other number of things. Unless this was the perpetrator, say he figured out an aphrodisiac gel—,”

“Bodily excretion, probably, yes, but go on,”

“He would have to know first of all that we're working on the case, and second of all he'd have to be stalking us,”

“Both parameters fit well within Lytta's abilities,” Mulder reminded her, “If we find Lytta, we find Starling.”

“Please tell me how finding Lytta is going to be easier than finding Clarice, Mulder,”

Mulder's face finally cracked into a smile, “He's got a car, doesn't he?”

His hand finally lifted from the door to let her open it and clamber in, but before she could a frazzled man ran up to them, his polaroid camera bouncing at his side. Mulder stood up straight, door between him and Scully, and stared at the man.

“A-Are you the FBI Agents?” he panted frantically. Mulder nodded, introducing the both of them and flashing his badge. The man almost began to hyperventilate and Scully had to take a few minutes to teach him how to breath, deep and slow through his teeth. Once he calmed down, he began to speak.

“I-I'm just an a-amateur you see, and I meant no harm. I have a huge collection of cop movies and novels so I, y'know, I've been keeping up with Agent Clarice Starling because it's like, my dream, y'know, to meet her or me-meet some agents and go with them on adventures and—,”

“We're kind of in a hurry here,” Mulder interrupted, shifting on his feet impatiently, “Please get to the point.” Scully's stare on the man hardened in turn, reiterating the words that would've much more likely come out of her mouth than Mulder's.

The frazzled photographer dug into his coat pockets, his fingers flailing and prodding until he pulled out a simple polaroid picture. It was upside down at first, and he started blubbering apologies until he turned it right side up. Scully's eyes widened and she snatched the photograph from his hands. Mulder looked on from his height.

“Where did you take this,” Scully demanded, “She's wearing the clothes she wore tonight, _where did you take this?_ ”

The photographer looked anxious to get his exclusive candid photograph of a flustered, aroused Clarice Starling back, but at the sharp edge of Scully's voice and Mulder's ever-looming shoulders, he stepped back and continued to blubber.

“N-Near the red light districts, m-maybe about three blocks down from King Street?”

“Mulder,” Scully demanded as he was already crossing the car to the driver's side.

“I got a c-call from one of my tabloid buddies, and the other photographers here say they were looking for her, so...so do I get credit? Assistant to the investigation?”

“We'll think about it,” Mulder said dryly as he dipped into the car. Scully followed and the photographer moved forward to retrieve his picture.

“Evidence,” Scully said coldly, “I'm confiscating this.”

The car door slammed and Mulder pulled away and turned around, tires screeching on the pavement.

 

~~  


_Clarice_

_Clarice_

_Running so far with a lamb in your arms_

_But the lamb is you, this time, you're carrying yourself_

_Everything is dark and cold here_

_And I think you've stumbled into the hornet's nest_

_Or the fly's nest, as it were_

_Because you can hear him searching for you_

_Bury yourself deeper in the factory filth and pray you don't scream like the other lambs_

 

~~

 

“Scully—,” Before Mulder could stop her, she had yanked a tabloid from underneath a closed newsstand. The corners and edges of the magazine tore from the cage constraints, but she smoothed out the wrinkles and stared at Clarice Starling's face beneath bold text suggesting her wily seduction of a psychopathic criminal. Detective Lytta's car was found in the area, now it was a matter of sweeping until they found her. Police, mostly undercover so as not to cause enough suspicion, made their way down the sidewalks and streets. It was still not enough; Lytta could recognize any one of the beat cops as well as Mulder and Scully. The magazine crinkled in her hand and she continued down the sidewalk. Mulder jogged to get up to her pace.

“Scully you're headed towards—,”

“I know where I'm headed towards,” Scully interrupted, her intense eyes flicking between the people mingling on the streets to the blank stare of Clarice's face on the magazine.

“We're not undercover,” Mulder reminded her, “We look just like a pair of cops looking to arrest these women,”

“Mulder, spare me your caution and start talking about, I don't know, werewolves or something.”

“You know what, a werewolf would be a good idea, he'd be able to pick up on her scent and this wouldn't be so tense of a chase,”

“Or Lytta's scent,” Scully ground her teeth. Without looking, she crossed the street in fast, determined strides, reaching the other sidewalk. Women in various tacky and revealing wardrobes started to scatter or curl into themselves, avoiding Scully's harsh shoulders and shaming stare. For all they knew Mulder and Scully were part of a team to purge the red light district of its workers.

“Scully, you're acting _irrationally_ ,” Mulder tried to reason, his eyes darting through all the faces of the women and the dirty windows above their heads.

“Do I have to reiterate how ridiculous that sounds coming from you?” Scully snapped. Mulder uneasily squeezed past a worker, his hands hovering over her shoulders to ease her along without trying to threaten her.

“That's my point,” Mulder protested, “The two of us acting irrationally instead of just me? Can you see the look on Skinner's face? Like an old librarian woman glancing over the top of his glasses, he wouldn't know what to do with us and our overdue books.”

“Is that why you've been playing my game, Mulder?” she snapped again without glancing over her shoulder, “Pausing the investigation just to go over the facts, pulling back and trying to pull rational explanations out of your ass so long as they tie back to your theory about sex demons?”

Mulder easily saw the workers part the waters for Scully as she stormed down the street, their shoulders flinching and pulling away from her especially when she spat _sex demons_. Heaving a sigh and running a hand through his hair, he gave an awkward smile at the nearest woman before resuming his pursuit.

“Scully I just—,”

“Just _what_ , Mulder? A new agent got poisoned under our watch and we let her walk out of the restaurant. _I'm_ a medical doctor, I should've realized something was wrong and stopped her before she left, at least made sure she got home safely!”

“Which home,” Mulder quipped, “Hers or yours?”

Scully turned sharply on her heel, pushing daggers into Mulder's eyes with her own. He skipped to a stop, hissing in a breath. It wasn't often that she looked at him like that. Even when the cockroaches had attacked and had resulted in a literal shit explosion there was less anger and disgust.

“What's it to you, Mulder?” she seethed, “I would take her anywhere she'd be safe and comfortable, and I know you would do the same!”

“You—You can't blame yourself for this, Scully,”

“Don't psychoanalyze me in the middle of a case, Mulder!” her face fell stony and cold, hard steel protecting against his soft voice.

“You've gotten really close to this case,”

“ _Mulder_...,”

“And I don't think you expected this to happen.”

Scully narrowed her eyes and turned, storming away from him. What he was going to say next was to voice his concerns that she was unexpectedly letting her emotions get in the way of her judgment. Yes they were on the right track, but even given the urgency they couldn't afford to slip up. The element of surprise had to be theirs or Lytta would do away with Starling or worse. Storming around, arguing, and blazing through the streets in a righteous chariot would only alert Lytta that they were after him. Scully knew that. Something had unlocked her emotions, making her bleed them out without restraint or notice. Something in the air, maybe. Something she didn't realize was affecting her. Before he could catch up to her she turned on one of the workers in the middle of stepping out of her way and thrust the tabloid in her face.

“Within the last hour have you seen this woman wander by?” Before the worker could respond Scully pulled the polaroid out of her pocket, “She was wearing these clothes and might have looked drunk or drugged. This is a serious missing persons investigations and she needs to be found as soon as possible,”

The worker could only stare and try to back up despite being twice Scully's size and with thighs the size of Scully's waist. Mulder winced inwardly, placing a reassuring hand on the small of Scully's back. He didn't want her to back down, not now, and so he only gave a quiet stare at the worker as she turned Scully's words over in her head.

“Girl, yer trippin',” the worker eventually said in a drawl that suggested she was from the south, “I've seen that girl everywhere in the papers, you seriously looking for her? You a paparazzi?”

Mulder saw the whiteness of Scully's skin and understood that she was about to bark as harsh as she was going to bite and he pressed his hand further against the small of her back. Scully twitched as though she was going to wrench herself away from him, but instead she let him touch her, trying to focus on the gentle firmness of his hand.

“Or you could help us in looking for a man named Detective Lytta,” Mulder stepped in, pulling a photo from his own pocket and showing it to the woman, “Most likely he'll be dressed in green; a green tie, dark green trench coat...,”

Mulder's words faded out from Scully's mind as he calmly conversed with the worker. Only snippets of information slipped into her mind, that the worker they were talking to only gave her name as Nude Orleans, that Lytta was a face she had seen many times before, particularly she had seen him with Cynthia Velasquez before she died. What did this matter. What did this matter. To the larger investigation it was crucial, she knew, but Starling was out there...Clarice was out there and they didn't know where...The sex workers here might have seen her and didn't want to open up because she had come storming in like a valkyrie from hell. If that was the case, then Mulder was right. If Mulder was right, she might have already ruined their chances to find Clarice, blowing up at Nude Orleans before trying to talk to her. Mulder mentioned Lipstick Tomcat. Scully's gut twisted up. Nude Orleans' mouth sewed shut and she regarded them with a harder eye. Scully knew she had screwed up.

“We didn't take her in,” Mulder explained to get her to talk again, “That was Lytta, and we have reason to believe it was to cover up his own foul play,”

Scully started wandering away from Mulder's hand at her back, feeling like she was in a haze. Nude Orleans started to slowly open up again as Mulder expressed concern and worry for Lipstick Tomcat, well-known amongst the community. Scully's head began to pound as the backs of her eyes began to sting. It felt the way it did when she was a teenager watching Bill work on his car, getting up close to the blackened oil and breathing in too many of the fumes without realizing it, a growing headache that soured her mood and by the time she realized she needed fresh air the headache was there to stay for the next two hours as Bill cussed under his breath and toiled away. She sniffed heavily, trying to determine if there was a broken gas pipe or any other fumes about she might've been inhaling without noticing it. None of the sex workers seemed affected—other than their extreme wariness of her, and if anything Mulder was thinking clearer than she was for once.

Call her crazy, but it felt like she was smelling fear. Fear reeked around here. Maybe it was from the workers, terrified of her arresting them, but they seemed to have only grown more curious as time went by, as Mulder continued to talk to them, showing the tabloid he had taken from Scully as well as the picture of Lytta. All the workers had recognized Lytta. They could only guess if they'd seen Starling. Strange how they were looking at her now, as if they were contemplating this new life form in their territory might be kind and ignore them peacefully. It almost felt like she was being judged by a colony of animals. A colony of ants looking up at a giant that had the power to crush them but wouldn't crush them.

_A colony of ants..._

_Smelling fear..._

Goddammit she hated it when she got like this, down in the nitty gritty of a case where she succumbed to Mulder's wild theories as long as they were helping her solve the case in that instant. She'd never ever admit to Mulder that more often than not she had moments, _lots_ of moments where she believed him for the greater good, using his words as a means to an end until she could unravel the science to prove her point. Here she was now, believing in his words because somewhere sometime she had read that a an ant out on a scouting mission would release alarm pheromones as warning signs to the other ants, as a plea for back up, for attack. Yes, she remembered where she read that now; it was on a poster in the entomologists' office that Clarice had taken her to see.

If Clarice really was, knowingly or not, some sort of _succubus_ that had insect-like traits, if she was an ant like Mulder had likened her to, then it was her fear that Scully was smelling and it was Scully herself that Clarice was calling for.

“Scully? _Scully!_ ”

Mulder's shoes slamming on the unkempt, littered sidewalk soon joined the sound of Scully's heels as he pursued her into the ragged, industrial areas of the red light district.

 

~~

 

Clarice didn't know where she was. The arousal was buzzing, ringing in her head, clouding her judgment as she heard Lytta pursuing her through the streets. Somehow she got the impression that he was chasing her somewhere without her being able to fight back. It seemed right, because now she had nestled herself deep in a pile of factory junk; waterlogged cardboard boxes, rusted tools, brittle old plastic. The factory was dark and decrepit, riddled with graffiti and broken glass on the outside and full of rat dung and echoing chains on the inside. Monoliths to a forgotten company.

There was something that was actually cushioning her where she was huddled, a sort of resilient wet substance that she was terrified to know. In her mind it was the same substance they had found at the crime scene, the semen or egg sample or _whatever_ it was. She shifted, breathing heavily and trying, _praying_ that none of the substance would get to any of her orifices. Her face winced. This was the second time in her short career at the FBI that she had wound up well within the territory of a notorious killer. But this time she had just wandered off and found herself here, she wasn't in pursuit, there was no goddamn reason for her to be here. Poison or roofies or whatever the fuck it was, Lytta had gotten her good and she had to be on her wits, sharp and feral just like she was in Buffalo Bill's house. She pawed aimlessly for her gun.

It was gone. Lytta must have taken it when he was guiding her down the streets. Though she was sweating from the heat her body was radiating she felt a cold chill run down her spine. Her leg slipped into the goopy substance and she winced again, tears brimming on her eyelids. The arousal between her legs was feeding off of her fear, pumping a growing, intense pain that burned down her legs and up her torso. If this was how the other women died, then...Then this was rape. This was rape, it was fucking rape and the incubus fed off of it and probably thought it simply natural and the way it had to be and Clarice could only feel her fear grow, breath hissing through her teeth. She had to stop the arousal, had to stop it _now_ because the last thing she wanted was for the FBI to find her body and rule it another mysterious death with no links to rape or murder.

It caught in her throat then, suddenly. The FBI would then contact Mulder, and Scully would be with him, and it would be Scully standing over her undoubtedly naked body, staring with those cold steely eyes she used to distance herself from cases.

Fuck.

Make it go away.

Someone was in the factory, and was incredibly nonchalant about the noise they were making. Her lips curled dangerously around her teeth as she hissed further, forcing a growl to rumble up her trachea.

“ _Lytta!_ ” she rasped into the empty factory, her voice bouncing off of the husks of machinery, “I know what you are, and so does the FBI!” A lie, still, but the FBI would learn eventually, so long as they decided to listen to Mulder which she got the impression they rarely did.

She saw a shadow in the dim light and despite her brave words she huddled further into the nest of the incubus, her eyes wide and scared, “I am a federal agent! They'll crucify you for what you do to me!”

“ _Or_ ,” Lytta's voice echoed in response, “You'll secure your place in the tabloids for another year or two, as the agent who seduced another killer but met her end in doing so. Such high regards, indeed.”

She gargled, readying herself to spit in his fucking face as soon as he was close enough for her to do so. Pain radiated from her abdomen and her legs twitched, useless. How long had it been since Lytta had poisoned her? Two hours? Three? Nothing had subsided and she was feeling dizzy and weak. Spitting in the fucker's face was going to be her only option.

“Is that what this is about,” Clarice hissed, “Is that why you're going to prey on me and not another defenseless red light woman?”

“Don't be so _generous_ , Agent Starling,” she could see his shadow grow smaller as he grew closer, knowing where his nest and where she was, “Whores that serve as feeding grounds for me don't deserve the integrity of the FBI poking their nose where they don't belong.”

“The FBI exists so that _no one_ is considered _feeding grounds_ and that no one is completely defenseless,” Clarice barked back, wishing her voice didn't waver so much. Lytta _tsked_ at her.

“Kind of ironic coming from a defenseless woman, isn't it?”

As Clarice's mortal fear sank in with Lytta in front of her, coat shed and hair illuminated by the dim light something fell in the factory, making a sharp clattering sound. Lytta swiveled his head back, then ducked back into the darkness. His killing, or his _feeding_ , whatever he wanted to call it, certainly couldn't be done quickly if it was going to be clean. Clarice's heart pounded in her chest. She was entirely certain it had been a rat, only prolonging her suffering and death by making Lytta jump at the smallest noise.

Clarice closed her eyes. Images of a lamb trapped much like she was flashed in front of her eyes and for the first time in her life she embraced them for their familiarity. If she considered herself the lamb instead of Clarice Starling, then she was no longer the one in the factory filth, no longer the one trapped in Lytta's nest.

There was a shuffling noise growing closer, something bigger than a rat, and a beam of strong light swung around. The light passed over Clarice's eyes, and her vision went red for a split-second. She scrunched her face and hunched down, trying to avoid it lest it interrupt her visions of the lambs. The light passed over again, then once more until it stayed on her face. She heaved in a gulp of air.

“Clarice,” a voice spoke softly, urgently, “ _Clarice_ , can you hear me?”

The filth around Clarice was pushed aside, stretching the goop around her in strings that slowly sagged to the floor. The young agent's eyes fluttered open, squinting at the harsh light and blinking rapidly until she could see a pair of blue eyes meeting hers. Scully clambered through the debris, neverminding the goopy substance that clung to her legs and arms as she forced it aside.

“S- _Scully_ ,” Clarice gasped shrilly, “Agent Scully, he's _here_.”

Scully wordlessly tucked the flashlight under her arm as she reached forward with one hand. Clarice felt her prying away from the nest, Scully's arm hooking just underneath her shoulder blades. Her other hand held her handgun, pointed in the air as she struggled to lift Clarice up. Clarice gasped again, in stings of pain that rang in time to her pants.

“I can't walk, I d-don't think I can walk, Scully,”

Scully attempted to prop her until she was sitting up, and though her hand was sullied from pulling Clarice up she gently pulled at the girl's eyelids, much as she had soon after Clarice's nightmare on her couch.

“Your pupils are still dilated,” Scully reported softly, “You've been aroused for over three hours due to something in your system, we need to get you to a hospital to flush the fluids out.”

An unflattering gurgle was Clarice's response as she shied away from Scully's touch. How in the world was she going to be able to let Scully save her without feeling immense shame for thinking only of Scully when she was fully aroused and wandering the streets? Fuck, she hoped that she was going to be able to keep her damn mouth shut or this would become awkward for everyone involved.

“Scully,” Clarice breathed, “Agent Mulder was right, it was Lytta, he's here, he's—,”

“Then we need to get you out of here as soon as possible, before this worsens,” Scully ordered, positioning herself to pull Clarice out of the mess by hooking her arms under Clarice's shoulders.

“Lytta was _just here_ , Scully, and I don't know where he—,”

A chorus of toppling factory debris came tumbling down from the walkway above them. The sound triggered an instantaneous reaction in Scully, and within a moments notice she went from pulling Clarice to shoving her back deep into the nest with all her body, collapsing on top of the young agent. Short girders and sheet metal cascaded down on the women, Scully throwing her arm up and curling her body around Clarice. One girder slammed into the floor next to Scully's ankle before falling over both of their bodies. Scully heard the snap of bone before she felt the pain shriek up and down her arm and she bit down on her lip so hard blood spurted forth. The blood splatted on Clarice's cheek as she felt the girder press the both of them against the concrete and all at once she feared death of a different kind.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning INSECT BASED BODY HORROR which should honestly be my specialty more than it is
> 
> oh god
> 
> i remember what mulder does in this chapter
> 
> silly boy

Scully felt the bones in her arm shift with painful friction as she bulged her muscles and pushed against the girder until it rolled off, scraping down her shoulder and pulling a few strands of fiery red hair with it. Muffled, distorted whimpers escaped between her teeth and plush lips, poor attempts at denying screams of pain from leaving her mouth. If she screamed, it would alert Lytta to their location. Yes, Mulder was somewhere in the factory too, and the noise no doubt had caused him to perk his chin in their direction as he swiftly made his way through the dark to where they were, but if Lytta knew they were conscious and had a fighting chance against them they would lose their advantage. Clarice shifted beneath her, her breathing shrill and harsh. Scully's handgun dropped near her head, and Clarice flinched as if she expected it to discharge. Finally releasing her lip from her teeth, Scully started wheezing and panting, droplets of sticky saliva and blood trickling down from where she had bit. Her hot breath warmed Clarice's sweaty cheeks, and the young agent tried to make herself smaller, ashamed of the thoughts running through her head.

Head injuries. Scully shifted, fumbling for the flashlight lost in the folds of her coat, and she pulled it out, flashing it over Clarice's forehead. No signs of blood that wasn't from her own lip, but that didn't mean that the impact hadn't bruised something. Clarice needed to get out of here. They _both_ needed to get out of here and though the local police would be sure to sweep this place soon their best bet was Mulder. Scully chanced a glance through the euclidean spiderweb of girders and scrap metal that had fallen over them, searching for a steady beam of light.

There had been no warning to the collapse of the walkway above them, no creaking groans or dustings of rust from failing support beams—what had just happened was deliberate and murderous. Scully closed her eyes and controlled her breathing, mouth hanging open. Lytta must have tried to orchestrate it, two agents that were after what they believed to be the killer (when really these girls just died of bizarre natural causes) crushed by condemned factory debris. If the women were gone, that only left Mulder to protest the identity of the killer, and it's not like Mulder was known for being trusted or listened to.

Unless of course, Lytta had similar plans in store for her partner.

_Mulder_...

Scully shifted, keeping her broken arm pressed close against her waist, and shimmied the flashlight into a hole in the debris, jutting it as far as it would go before she started flickering the light. Three short, three long, three short. S.O.S.. She could only pray that Lytta was creeping in the dark somewhere, only listening for sounds and not looking for light.

Repeating the signal three times, she heard something shift above their heads and Scully quickly retreated the flashlight, forcing her mouth shut so she could hear over the sound of her breathing.

Clarice, mashed against the goop of the nest and waterlogged cardboard, gave a small croak as she tried to lift herself up on her elbows, her auburn hair in wet mats and clumps underneath whatever few strands that were still dry. Scully quickly glanced down at the girl, and wrapped her good arm underneath her shoulder and neck to help support her. Clarice slipped. Scully pressed her body close to hers and her hand went up to the girl's scalp, fingers threading through her hair and pulling her into the pillow of her cheek. Though it took effort Clarice leaned into Scully, trusting her support and breathing cold air onto the crest of Scully's clavicles.

More noises from above. Clarice held her breath, thinking of the lamb she had been clutching, thinking of the fat bodies of moths fluttering around Buffalo Bill's house. Someone was descending something, stairs, a ladder, it was hard to tell. At once Scully knew it wasn't Mulder, and she tightened her grip on Clarice, lowering her head until the side of her mouth pressed against Clarice's forehead. Her eyes still glared upwards, alert. Carefully, slowly, she propped the flashlight to shine out, hopefully illuminating whoever would walk by. Once it was in place her hand went back to the back of Clarice's head and she breathed slowly, calmly, hoping that Clarice would follow suit despite the poison in her veins.

It wasn't long and the footsteps drew closer. Nearly three years of working with Mulder and Scully could already tell it wasn't him by the cadence of the noise. She stiffened before seeing the shimmering green tie in the beam of the flashlight. Nudging her foot, she carefully turned the flashlight up to see the lower half of Lytta's face.

“Not a dinner, but a _feast_ ,” Lytta proclaimed proudly. Scully gave him a steely glare, harder than the one she had originally given Clarice when she first walked into the office of the X-Files. This man, this man was sick and she was only luring him into a false sense of security. Using Clarice's body as a shield, she moved her good hand in the darkness until she found her handgun. Goop stuck to the barrel but she didn't care to wipe it off as she quietly drew it up. Clarice felt the cold metal scrape against the back of her neck but she did her best to not react, keeping her eyes on Lytta.

It was, to say the least, some sort of mistake to do so. Protrusions from the edges of Lytta's mouth emerged and expanded, pulling his lips wider than they should've been. They seemed hard, bluntly hooked, and as they kept expanding a viscous, goopy liquid akin to the substance the women were splayed on started dripping from...well, the only word Scully could find to describe it was _mandibles_. Still his human nose and chin warped and stretched around the mandibles. The substance began to fall in disgusting plops to the floor, and Lytta lifted a hand to run his fingers through it like it was water from a faucet. Scully tensed, curling her legs under her as she sat up straight. Lytta took a step forward, pushing debris aside, and in one quick motion Scully pointed her gun at him.

“ _Freeze_ , hands up where I can see them, and you'd best do as I say, Lytta; I'm a very good shot but not with only my left arm. A bullet to your shoulder can easily miss for worse!”

There was an underlying frantic tone to her voice but it was covered by her raw determination and power. Her shouts echoed through the factory, and if the light hadn't caught Mulder's attention, she knew that would. Lytta would be an idiot to take his eyes off of her and the gun, and though she wasn't lying about being a poor shot with her left hand she could just as easily miss him as hit him. Lytta's mandibles clicked together in slow, sharp snapping noises, and she noticed his trachea roll unnaturally, producing more of the substance she came to understand as the aphrodisiac he had poisoned Clarice with.

Anxiously pulling her feet tighter against her, her hand wavered as she pushed both Clarice and herself back, farther away from Lytta. A thought that hadn't crossed her mind before filled her with dread she didn't wear on her face, _what if Lytta had gotten to Mulder first_. At that idea she tightened her grip on the gun, the fingers of her broken arm curling desperately over a button of her coat.

“One more step and I pull the trigger!”

One more step, indeed.

The gunshot blasted off of the metal around them, ringing painfully in their ears. Scully winced but didn't dare close her eyes. Her wince became a howl of frustration as the bullet ricocheted off of sheet metal, sending sparks dancing against Lytta's arm. She'd have to save her next shot for point blank range, but the force of the backlash had upset her broken arm and the howl of frustration turned into a howl of pain.

“ _Scully_ ,” Clarice gripped her good arm, pulling on it to pull Scully further away, deeper into the nest as though that would save them. Scully glared up through strands of her loose red hair, hunching over her broken arm and doing her best to keep her gun pointed at Lytta. Lytta shoved aside the sheet metal that the bullet had bounced off of, clearing the way from him to them. Point blank range, if only Scully could just tilt the gun higher...

“Hey Mr. Green! Did'ya ever think about picking on the unfair sex instead?!” Mulder whooped, charging into Lytta. Both men fell askew against the debris, and before Lytta could react Mulder jerked his chin forward and kissed him square on the mouth. Mandibles? Whichever his lips were touching more of. Scully herself jerked backwards in disgust, seeing the goop glisten around the kiss. Lytta's eyes burned with rage and with a violent spasm he coughed, straight onto Mulder's puckered lips. Mulder drew back in an instant with a shriek of pain, causing Scully's disgust to skyrocket into worry. Lytta kicked, and soon Mulder disappeared ass over head into the piles of debris.

Lytta spat at him for good measure, causing another screech of pain from Mulder. Acid, _cantharidin_ , it had to be; Lytta had had to have spit a high concentration of it on Mulder to throw him off. Wiping his lips and mandibles off, Lytta sniffed and turned back to the women.

In that moment of shock Clarice let go of Scully, yanking the gun from her hand. Scully stiffened, frazzled by what had unraveled in front of her. Before she could regain herself there were two sharp blasts close to her ear.

One, Lytta's knee exploded and he began to crumple.

Two, it struck Lytta's falling form. Who could tell where, but Scully was certain that Lytta couldn't crawl after them if he tried.

Her ear exploded with a loud, horrendous ringing that dulled all other sounds in the room. Feeling buzzed and weak, she hunched forward, barely aware of the pain of her broken arm as Clarice lowered the gun. Out of her peripheral vision she could see Clarice mouth something, then continue to breathe rapidly. Scully's legs slipped out from underneath her, and beyond the ringing she began to feel the pins and needles up her calves and thighs. She closed her eyes, waiting for the ringing to settle, rubbing her legs to rid themselves of the numb feeling. The vague impression that Clarice was watching her do so was in the back of Scully's mind, but she had too much to focus on right now.

Somewhere in front of her vision a heap of limbs moved, attempting to shamble together into something that vaguely resembled a human being.

Mulder.

As the ringing died away she could vaguely hear contorted sobs of pain, Mulder's high-pitched wails of agony. Snapping to attention, Scully pressed her bad arm as securely into her waist as she could and crawled forward, pulling on Mulder's legs until he was more or less out in the open, if out in the open meant that he was now securely in the nest and his back was painted with the goop as much as it was on Clarice.

Mulder, barely registering Scully hovering over him, groaned, “Homophobia kills.”

As dumb as it was, his attempt at a quip made her shoulders fall in relaxation, “Mulder, what in the world were you thinking?” Scully admonished, fumbling for a flashlight to shine on his mouth. It was red and angry, quickly swelling up and she could tell it was going to crack and blister.

“Jus' thought...y'know...he only attacked biological women...if'n he was an incubus, they aren't recorded to go after the same sex they've assigned with...and...,”

So he thought a man's gentle touch would be Lytta's visceral undoing. Like he'd melt and scream like Mulder had opened the Ark of the Covenant in front of him.

Well.

He'd thought of stupider things.

“You've got acid burns all over your goddamn lips, Mulder,”

“Yeah-huh. He was too scared of what we could be.”

Within minutes his lips would swell up so bad he wouldn't be able to speak, but instead of telling him so Scully only gave him a dry smirk. Digging out her cell phone from her pocket, she pulled the antenna out with her teeth and dialed for an ambulance for three: for Mulder's acid burns (and she was getting the distinct impression that Lytta's second spit had sprayed his ass), her broken arm, and Clarice's poisoning.

Oh, and a note about Lytta bleeding out. But the coroner would take care of that.

Clarice watched from afar, ashamed to push herself close to Scully after having such damned thoughts about her that were only resurfacing due to the close contact they had had. No, if Scully ever knew the lack of self-control she had, fantasizing about her soft cheeks, smooth nose, fiery hair— _god fucking damn it_ she wished this arousal would shut the hell up, that the pain between her legs would go away and she wished she would be able to look Agent Scully in the eyes again without shame of what was going on in her head. Scully didn't deserve that. Scully deserved better than that.

She was quiet, watching the two partners joke and make fun of each other in their own little way, seeing past what others thought of them. Spooky wasn't what Mulder was to Scully because she understood him more than that. Uptight ice queen wasn't what Mulder thought of Scully because he understood her more than that.

And then there was Clarice. There because she was assigned to be, because it was a big case, because her face would undoubtedly show up in the tabloids again because she was the one who fired the shots against Detective Lytta. To save another agent and herself. She could see the headlines now if she closed her eyes, and she bet that everyone else could see it too.

Because that's who she was, and people didn't need to understand her more than that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for taking this journey! for me it was sort of down memory lane as i skimmed over and vaguely remembered things.
> 
> i started another scully/starling fic on tumblr but never finished it...i have the notes for it somewhere but it dove into cthulhu mythos bs. another monster of the week. but with horseback riding and clarice being the weird horse girl. ANYWAYS. i don't know if that'll ever get done now...sadly
> 
> i still look back fondly on this fic even if i found some things that were chin-stroke worthy. it was fun and i had fun.

Skinner stared at the agents in front of him. The silence was deafening as he took in the goddamn catastrophe. Mulder was sitting awkwardly, taking pressure off of his tailbone which had cracked when Detective Lytta threw him over a pile of debris. His lips and the surrounding area of his mouth were red, swollen, and the skin was peeling painfully. They shone with the ointment he had generously slathered on. (Scully had offered to do it for him, but he had refused saying he could handle it on his own. With a glance at Clarice, she let him go, only to puff out her cheeks, trying to hold in her laughter when he came back. Clarice avoided her gaze, because the moment they dared hold eye contact the two of them would lose it.) If anything the lower half of his face would've looked more at home in a pumpkin patch rather than being attached to a human being.

Scully herself was battered, small cuts and bruises littering her skin. Her arm was in a sling, bound up in a cement cast that Mulder had kept bothering her to sign. (The color was a drab gray. Mulder wouldn't stop giving her shit that it should've been something like red, or blue, or green, or any other color other than something boring. That was when Scully turned to Clarice to support and found that she had been quietly nodding at Mulder from behind her shoulder, egging him on.) Seeing Mulder injured in front of him wasn't that much of a deference from the normal for Skinner, but seeing Scully worse for wear and beat up? That didn't usually happen, or she was much better at hiding it.

The only one who looked any semblance of normal was Agent Starling, sitting to his far left, next to Scully. Her hands were folded neatly if a little too tightly on her lap, her mouth just as thin and tight. Still, there were fairly large and dark bags underneath the young agent's eyes, and Skinner had seen from all three of their reports that Clarice had to be admitted to the hospital before even Mulder and Scully could get themselves admitted, treated for poisoning. She had to be hooked up to an IV for 24 hours, flushing her system and putting fluids back into her body. Even now she sat with a cheap water bottle near her feet, no doubt an order from the doctor that Scully herself made sure was carried out.

Dare he even open his mouth to ask for clarification?

“Agent Mulder...,” Skinner began. As was usual, ask the crazy one the questions first, then work down the ladder to the sensible one and then try to meet somewhere in the middle. Or more towards the sensible one, as it were. But the words died on his lips and he let out a sigh, glancing down at the reports in front of him before looking back up and attempting to speak again. Still nothing. Mulder would've pulled his lips inwards if that was possible. Skinner shook his head.

“Agent Mulder, why did you resort to the rash decision of... _tackling,”_ it was rather clear Skinner was squinting at what the report said Mulder did and he was quickly thinking of synonyms to Mulder's actions instead of spelling it out for him, “the perpetrator, Detective Lytta, instead of using your issued firearm?”

Mulder grunted in his throat, and Scully sighed. The man could speak, if grunting and sighing through the nose could be considered speaking. Heaving a breath, Scully spoke for him.

“Sir, if I may speak in Agent Mulder's place,” Skinner turned his head to Scully, giving her silent permission, “I took the liberty of asking him such a question before his lips swelled up and restricted his ability to speak. In searching the derelict factory he had stumbled across another _nest_ of Lytta's, so to speak, similar to the one Cl—Agent Starling was tangled in when I found her. He found another dead body, perhaps a week, maybe a week and a half old. The sound of Lytta shoving girders onto where I had found Agent Starling, what caused my broken arm, startled Mulder and he dropped his gun in the secreted substance in the nest. Thus, he didn't want to risk that the gun had been jammed by the unknown substance, or if the substance was flammable or not, and went by what he referred to as _the best course of action_.”

_But,_ Scully seemed to add with her eyes as she stared steadily at Skinner, _If you want my opinion, he 100% believed his method would work as if he was throwing holy water on what he thought was a vampire and in his zeal didn't stop to think about the...extremity of such an action._

Or that it could've caused both her and Clarice their lives, but she wasn't here to throw Mulder on a guilt trip. That was Skinner's job as he stared hard and long at Mulder. At least distracting Lytta made sure that the action wasn't completely useless, but still, it had been a difficult report to type up.

“On record, I'm judging the ends, not the means. Off-record...Whatever it was that kissing him was supposed to do, it apparently didn't happen.” Skinner lectured dryly. Scully pulled her lips back and Clarice tilted her chin upwards a little. Mulder, however, simply stared off into nothing, trying to ignore Skinner's words.

“Or seemed to have the reverse effect,” Scully noted, equally dryly. Mulder glanced at her. If only he could frown. _If only_.

Clarice quietly cleared her throat before speaking about her own actions, “At any rate, firing the gun was a split-second decision to save the three of us, since it appears that bullets remain to be more lethal than a kiss.”

Imagine that.

Mulder turned away and crossed his arms.

“This...Detective Lytta, his body was taken into custody?”

Clarice nodded slowly. Scully shifted.

“Detective Lytta died on the way to the hospital due to blood loss and trauma caused by the two gun shots Agent Starling fired in self-defense. Foreign objects were found lodged in his oral cavity and his throat—,”

_Mmmandubuhl._ That was the closest Scully could describe the noise that Mulder had attempted to utter. She turned to look at him, took in a breath, held it, and released it.

“The foreign objects were organic in nature and resembled exoskeleton for arthropod creatures such as insects and arachnids. Agent Starling has had a sample sent to entomologists at the Smithsonian for analyzation.”

_Mmmandubuhl!_ Mulder insisted. Scully chanced a glance over to him, sighed, and settled back to her seat. If he could pout, Mulder would've. Skinner glanced down at his report, wondering if he was actually skimming the words or just staring into nothing.

“Also...,” Scully continued with a sigh, refusing to sit back up straight as she effortlessly interpreted his nonsense, “Agent Mulder believes that they were mandibles.”

Silence. Skinner tapped his pencil against his knuckles and glanced down at Mulder's report.

“I see that.”

Awkward silence. Scully seemed too relaxed to Clarice, but then again this may have become old hat to her. Clarice remained quiet until she was spoken to. She had only spoken to Skinner once before when she was sent to request help from X-Files for the case. The paperwork had made it so that she barely had to do any talking, and with as busy as Skinner was she hadn't had any gauge on who the man was. Same for him, although she was certain her reputation had preceded her.

“Agent Starling, do you have anything to add to these reports before I send them to your supervisor?”

Out of her peripheral vision Scully saw Clarice's shoulders release with the breath she was holding. A weird mix of pride and worry danced in the back of her head. Pride that Clarice had walked away from all of this, worry that she was going to sully her name too fast with the X-Files. Not that Scully wanted to stand as a cautionary tale for another bright-eyed young agent like her; Scully wouldn't take back a day of working with Mulder despite all the...issues he presented. And the missing time of her abduc—her kidnapping. Scully was here because she was strong enough to be and wanted to stay here.

Clarice was strong enough; she shot the perpetrator after he brandished what Mulder insisted were _mandibles_ with a cool, calculated and swift movement. And she was _drugged_ while she did so. Hannibal Lecter hadn't scared her away from working with the FBI either. But whether or not she wanted to be here was a different story. Scully was merely wishing her luck in her worry, because she didn't think the X-Files would be the perfect fit for her.

“Nothing much to add, Sir,” Clarice answered, “Lipstick Tomcat was released from custody, and has said that she felt well taken care of during her time at the detention center.”

Skinner folded his hands together, and for the first time Scully got to see how he acted in front of a more normal agent. Cordial. By the books but certainly cordial. It was a weird feeling.

“It's my understanding that you saw to it that her stay was comfortable and accommodated to her needs as much as possible before you left,” Skinner asked. Clarice nodded.

“To me it was clear she wasn't the perpetrator and that it was a miscalculation on Lytta's part.”

“An intentional miscalculation to cover his tracks and pin the murders on someone else?” Skinner asked. Clarice bit her lip slowly and discreetly.

“That, and perhaps the knowledge that she would be met with bigotry and hostility.”

Skinner nodded as Scully finally allowed herself to look over at Clarice. Mulder was still acting like he wasn't paying attention, but it was good. This had been good. Had more closure than many of their cases. Of course time would tell if another body would show up, but they had gathered enough evidence to point to Lytta as the killer that the other agents Clarice was working with could build their case and settle it. It would come out amended, of course, and god forbid any of the tabloids got wind of the whole...incubus thing.

The thought crossed her mind as they were leaving Skinner's office and she took Mulder by the elbow and led him aside, speaking low.

“Mulder, not a word about this incubus stuff to the Lone Gunmen.”

Mulder looked hurt, and attempted to open his mouth as if he was going to speak. Scully shushed him immediately by digging her nails into his arm.

“Serious, Mulder.” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, and she immediately knew what he was asking. _Was this about Clarice, again?_

“Why else would I ask?” Scully hissed. Mulder raised his eyebrows, glancing behind her to where Clarice was awkwardly standing, not quite ready to leave the office yet without a few final words to her temporary partners. _Why else, indeed_.

“ _Please_ give her the decency of doing this,” Scully pleaded, “We could use another agent outside of our department that isn't...,”

The raised eyebrows were joined with a tilt of his head as he kept asking his dry, inaudible questions. Someone outside of their department that wasn't also spooky, Scully? Tall order. Another glance at Clarice. Tall, tall order.

Mulder gave her a look that told her he was excusing himself to the basement. Or to home, depending on how his lips (and whatever was left of his dignity) felt. Scully watched him warily, but had enough confidence that he would respect her request. Skinner's secretary, shuffling papers in her hand, then left as well, and it was the two women left in the room. Scully looked at her, light and content. Clarice regarded her, but for whatever reason didn't allow emotion to cross her face. Undeterred despite the small sting in her chest, Scully approached her. As if on cue Clarice unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and took a drink.

“Recovering alright, Agent Starling?”

Clarice swallowed and nodded, feeling a little like a dumb kid. Scully's expression softened further.

“Really, Clarice, how are you feeling?”

“I...,” she began, “I don't really know.”

Hoping to sound encouraging, Scully continued, “Trust me, things can only go up from here for you. I don't think Mulder will be looking for cases that would require outside help anytime soon, not that he didn't enjoy working with you.”

“I bet,” Clarice's voice stung, “...Scully. I just. I don't want things to keep going up for me anymore. They had the TV on at the hospital, they were already reporting my involvement in the case. They say I saved the day.”

Scully cocked her head to the side, and motioned for Clarice to start walking. In an hour the sun would cast long shadows over the city, it was time to head home, “You did, you know.”

“I got _poisoned_ and fled right into his trap, endangering both you and Agent Mulder.”

Scully laughed, “We _are_ agents too, you know.”

“Yes, but—,” Clarice bit her lip and shut herself up, “Nevermind.”

She fell into uncomfortable silence as they made their way to the parking garage. Scully let her have her space, part of her wondering if Clarice was simply so shaken she needed time very far away from the X-Files. She could understand that, but asking her such a question seemed invasive and, in a way, a little desperate.

In reality Clarice was swimming in a pool of shame. The case had, thus far, been a success and she'd be a big part in making sure it closed as cleanly as possible. Despite their injuries both Scully and Mulder were in high spirits since this brought more closure than most of their cases. It still did come at her cost, though; her face all over the news, all over the tabloids, just with different text around them. Again, associated with wily seduction. Clarice felt sick. There were too many things on her mind, too many things that she wouldn't get to say out loud, things that wouldn't be heard. Skinner had been an opportunity but he was more concerned with his own agents. Meeting her own superior would come tomorrow, but even then...Krendler wasn't the kind of man you'd reveal personal doubts in front of. He wasn't safe. Skinner wasn't concerned.

Scully was here, though. And despite the fantasies she hated herself for, she had to speak.

“Scully, wait.”

Scully paused, nearly to where Clarice's car was. Clarice had graciously offered to drive Scully to and from work due to her broken arm and Mulder's slight incapacitation with the broken tailbone. Clarice stared at the numbers of her license plate, attempting to form coherent words.

“I didn't prove myself out there. I know I protested my ability a lot at the beginning, but nothing I did reflected that. The tabloids don't care. They eat it up, like I'm their posterchild. And it...It feels _wrong_.”

Scully was quiet. When she spoke it was serious and soft, “It is wrong. Everything printed in the tabloids is wrong.”

Clarice busied herself by sliding around to the driver's side to unlock the door. Scully found her place in front of the passenger's door, but kept her gaze on Clarice. The lock clicked, but Scully pressed her good arm down on the roof of the car to catch the other agent's attention.

“Clarice. The tabloids are wrong because they praise you for not only unorthodox hollywood methods but also for having some sort of supernatural talent for being an agent. You're a good agent, but not because of that. I'd be the first to tell anyone that their methods are unorthodox, working with Fox ' _maybe if I kiss him he'll melt_ ' Mulder.”

That got a small snort from her, but she still looked sullen.

“You're a good agent because you work for it.” Scully finished. Clarice twisted her mouth.

“Yeah. Really worked at getting poisoned and sending the whole force on a manhunt.”

Scully frowned, and watched Clarice enter the car before she followed suit.

“The killer Tooms found his fate in my apartment the first time we caught him, due to negligence. I was...kidnapped, due to negligence. Mulder and I weren't just going to stand back and let you meet your maker.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Clarice said flatly. Scully opened her mouth to reply that they were agents, of course they were concerned, but began to feel that Clarice needed something different. That there was something else she wasn't saying. Scully reached out and placed her hand over the younger agents as the key reached the ignition. Clarice froze, willing herself not to tremble. Thoughts, memories of the shameful fantasies she imagined while she was drugged washed over her and her entire body felt clammy and disgusting. Much the way it had felt when she was hiding in Lytta's nest, in fact. The hand that was on the steering wheel wrapped around it until her knuckles whitened and she looked away in despair.

_Succubus_.

Mulder...He still gave off a creepy vibe, although she was slowly coming to see that that was less because of malicious intent and more just because Mulder was so wrapped up with his problems that he didn't care what others thought of him. Hell, after being called creepy or spooky all his career he was probably numb to it all. But still...the word he had coughed out that morning...the theory he cooked up that looked for all the world to be true...If he had similar theories about her, who's to say they weren't unknowingly true? What attracted people to Clarice anyways, what made Hannibal Lecter take an interest in uninteresting her, and was Scully just another one of the faceless masses that simply adored her for one way or the other without any semblance of free will?

“Clarice...?”

She was hunched in her shoulders, trembling just like she hadn't wanted to. Still, she pushed words past her teeth.

“You know what the drug did.”

Scully stared at her in an affirming way. Clarice sucked in a breath.

“I swear I couldn't stop the thoughts. But I didn't want to think about anything else.”

The red-haired woman remained quiet to let her speak, soft pads of her fingers resting between Clarice's knuckles.

“Scully...I'm sorry, I'm so—I'm so... _ashamed_ ,” Clarice managed to force out, “All I could think of was you and I don't know _why_ , it just _happened_. Out of everything, shooting Lytta, running out of the restaurant, getting captured, out of _everything_ I wish I could just—take that all _back_.”

“Should I drive?” Scully quietly noted due to Clarice's overwhelming emotion. Clarice shook her head, no, of course not, Scully was physically incapable of driving, it was out of the question. But hot, painful tears were forming at the corners of her eyes and she shuddered.

“I don't mean anything by it...,” Clarice said morosely, “I just. I just couldn't think of anything else that...,” _comforted me_. The young woman swallowed hard, realizing she hadn't pulled her hand away from Scully's. Staring at the two of them overlapped, she bit her lip, waiting for Scully to draw away and become silent for the ride back to her apartment.

She didn't.

Instead her thumb came to stroke the back of her hand, slow and steady.

“You know you didn't have to tell me any of this,” Scully said after a long while. Clarice burned, pain erupting in her chest as she expected a rejecting lecture on how agents needed to have their emotions in check while on the case. It was what Scully seemed to breathe, she did it so easily, so _naturally_ ; the only thing Clarice had to her name was running out of the sanitarium after Miggs threw cum on her face. Yes. _So_ emotionally composed.

“But you did. And that was...,” Scully searched around for the right word, never breaking her gaze off of Clarice, “Brave. That was brave.”

“Okay.” Clarice responded, deadened and not sure of Scully's words though they healed the pain a little. Scully finally retreated her hand and let her start the engine. She pulled out of the parking space, and started to drive, quiet and thickly sniffing every so often.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered once they were out on the road, “I don't really know how to...Not react. To things yet.”

Scully looked at her, incredulous and a little concerned. For a while she opted to say nothing, until she sighed and relented.

“Mulder almost convinced me off the case when you were missing because I was _that_ worried about you.”

Clarice blinked.

“I mean to say, I was letting emotions get in the way.”

She tightened her hands on the steering wheel as her heart began to race. Scully directed her to the next turn towards her apartment. As she pulled up, Scully put her hand over Clarice's again, finding the soft and sensitive spots between her knuckles.

“And if thinking of me helped you get yourself away from Lytta long enough for us—for _me_ to find you, then...I'd say that's a better handling of emotion than what I was doing.”

Scully's hand left hers and she opened the door. Clarice watched her carefully exit and suddenly her heart beat shot into her throat.

“Scully—,”

The woman in question paused and leaned down to meet her eye to eye. Feeling her lower lip weaken, Clarice tried her damndest to keep her gaze steady.

“D...Do you need a ride to work, tomorrow?” It was the only thing she could think of to say, but somehow the words didn't sound like anything she wanted to say in the end. A wince caught her and her brows curled upwards a little, hoping Scully wouldn't think too lowly of her.

Despite their short time together Clarice had gotten a feeling to how rare it was for Scully to give a genuine smile, especially to a coworker. Reaching forward with her good hand, Scully awkwardly reached for her cheek but then dropped to Clarice's shoulder instead. At first she thought that was going to be all, some sort of professional but intimate acknowledgment. Scully pulled forward though and before Clarice knew it her soft round lips were pressed meaningfully against her forehead. Stutters and unasked questions stumbled past her lips and she gripped the lapel of Scully's suit. Scully pulled back, enough for Clarice to see the lower half of her face. Her lips were warm and inviting.

Just like she had imagined they could be.

“A ride would be wonderful, thank you, Clarice.”

_Thank you, Clarice_.

“S-Scully?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Scully dipped her head a little in acknowledgment, meeting her eye to eye. They were _very_ close. Clarice could feel their breaths mingle. Summoning up what courage she could, she gently closed the distance between them in a kiss. Just for a second.

But it was a second Scully didn't pull away from.

“Clarice?” Scully murmured softly. She hummed, waiting for her to continue, “I don't mind lending out my wardrobe, but next time you come over it might be best to bring your own clothes. Mulder has a bit of a wild imagination, you know.”

Clarice smiled, her heart fluttering and dancing and doing whatever it wanted to do, all the things she was told it always _should_ do in these sorts of situations. Scully was still leaning into her car, a bit hazardous considering her broken arm, but the smile remained on her face. Contentment. Soft happiness. Suddenly feeling weary from all of the strain and stress, Clarice rested her forehead against Scully's and replied, relieved.

“I know.”


End file.
